Lucille
Lucille
Post rating:
~
White people aren’t told that the color of their skin is a problem very often. We sail through police check points, don’t garner sideways glances in affluent neighborhoods, and are generally understood to be predispositioned for success based on a physical characteristic (the color of our skin) we have little control over beyond sunscreen and tanning oil.
After six years of working in and traveling through a number of different countries where white people are in the numerical minority, I’ve come to realize that there is one place being white is not only a hindrance, but negative — most of the developing world.
In high school, I travelled to Tanzania as part of a school trip. There were 14 white girls, 1 black girl who, to her frustration, was called white by almost everyone we met in Tanzania, and a few teachers/chaperones. $3000 bought us a week at an orphanage, a half built library, and a few pickup soccer games, followed by a week long safari.
Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue.
Basically, we failed at the sole purpose of our being there. It would have been more cost effective, stimulative of the local economy, and efficient for the orphanage to take our money and hire locals to do the work, but there we were trying to build straight walls without a level.
That same summer, I started working in the Dominican Republic at a summer camp I helped organize for HIV+ children. Within days, it was obvious that my rudimentary Spanish set me so far apart from the local Dominican staff that I might as well have been an alien. Try caring for children who have a serious medical condition, and are not inclined to listen, in a language that you barely speak. It isn’t easy. Now, 6 years later, I am much better at spanish and am still highly involved with the camp programing, fundraising, and leadership. However, I have stopped attending having finally accepting that my presence is not the godsend I was coached by non-profits, documentaries, and service programs to believe it would be.
You see, the work we were doing in both the DR and Tanzania was good. The orphanage needed a library so that they could be accredited to a higher level as a school, and the camp in the DR needed funding and supplies so that it could provide HIV+ children with programs integral to their mental and physical health. It wasn’t the work that was bad. It was me being there.
It turns out that I, a little white girl, am good at a lot of things. I am good at raising money, training volunteers, collecting items, coordinating programs, and telling stories. I am flexible, creative, and able to think on my feet. On paper I am, by most people’s standards, highly qualified to do international aid. But I shouldn’t be.
I am not a teacher, a doctor, a carpenter, a scientist, an engineer, or any other professional that could provide concrete support and long-term solutions to communities in developing countries. I am a 5' 4" white girl who can carry bags of moderately heavy stuff, horse around with kids, attempt to teach a class, tell the story of how I found myself (with accompanying powerpoint) to a few thousand people and not much else.
Some might say that that’s enough. That as long as I go to X country with an open mind and a good heart I’ll leave at least one child so uplifted and emboldened by my short stay that they will, for years, think of me every morning.
I don’t want a little girl in Ghana, or Sri Lanka, or Indonesia to think of me when she wakes up each morning. I don’t want her to thank me for her education or medical care or new clothes. Even if I am providing the funds to get the ball rolling, I want her to think about her teacher, community leader, or mother. I want her to have a hero who she can relate to — who looks like her, is part of her culture, speaks her language, and who she might bump into on the way to school one morning.
After my first trip to the Dominican Republic, I pledged to myself that we would, one day, have a camp run and executed by Dominicans. Now, about seven years later, the camp director, program leaders and all but a handful of counselors are Dominican. Each year we bring in a few Peace Corps Volunteers and highly-skilled volunteers from the USA who add value to our program, but they are not the ones in charge. I think we’re finally doing aid right, and I’m not there.
Before you sign up for a volunteer trip anywhere in the world this summer, consider whether you possess the skill set necessary for that trip to be successful. If yes, awesome. If not, it might be a good idea to reconsider your trip. Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental. It slows down positive growth and perpetuates the “white savior” complex that, for hundreds of years, has haunted both the countries we are trying to ‘save’ and our (more recently) own psyches. Be smart about traveling and strive to be informed and culturally aware. It’s only through an understanding of the problems communities are facing, and the continued development of skills within that community, that long-term solutions will be created.
https://medium.com/race-class/b84d4011d17e
After six years of working in and traveling through a number of different countries where white people are in the numerical minority, I’ve come to realize that there is one place being white is not only a hindrance, but negative — most of the developing world.
In high school, I travelled to Tanzania as part of a school trip. There were 14 white girls, 1 black girl who, to her frustration, was called white by almost everyone we met in Tanzania, and a few teachers/chaperones. $3000 bought us a week at an orphanage, a half built library, and a few pickup soccer games, followed by a week long safari.
Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue.
Basically, we failed at the sole purpose of our being there. It would have been more cost effective, stimulative of the local economy, and efficient for the orphanage to take our money and hire locals to do the work, but there we were trying to build straight walls without a level.
That same summer, I started working in the Dominican Republic at a summer camp I helped organize for HIV+ children. Within days, it was obvious that my rudimentary Spanish set me so far apart from the local Dominican staff that I might as well have been an alien. Try caring for children who have a serious medical condition, and are not inclined to listen, in a language that you barely speak. It isn’t easy. Now, 6 years later, I am much better at spanish and am still highly involved with the camp programing, fundraising, and leadership. However, I have stopped attending having finally accepting that my presence is not the godsend I was coached by non-profits, documentaries, and service programs to believe it would be.
You see, the work we were doing in both the DR and Tanzania was good. The orphanage needed a library so that they could be accredited to a higher level as a school, and the camp in the DR needed funding and supplies so that it could provide HIV+ children with programs integral to their mental and physical health. It wasn’t the work that was bad. It was me being there.
It turns out that I, a little white girl, am good at a lot of things. I am good at raising money, training volunteers, collecting items, coordinating programs, and telling stories. I am flexible, creative, and able to think on my feet. On paper I am, by most people’s standards, highly qualified to do international aid. But I shouldn’t be.
I am not a teacher, a doctor, a carpenter, a scientist, an engineer, or any other professional that could provide concrete support and long-term solutions to communities in developing countries. I am a 5' 4" white girl who can carry bags of moderately heavy stuff, horse around with kids, attempt to teach a class, tell the story of how I found myself (with accompanying powerpoint) to a few thousand people and not much else.
Some might say that that’s enough. That as long as I go to X country with an open mind and a good heart I’ll leave at least one child so uplifted and emboldened by my short stay that they will, for years, think of me every morning.
I don’t want a little girl in Ghana, or Sri Lanka, or Indonesia to think of me when she wakes up each morning. I don’t want her to thank me for her education or medical care or new clothes. Even if I am providing the funds to get the ball rolling, I want her to think about her teacher, community leader, or mother. I want her to have a hero who she can relate to — who looks like her, is part of her culture, speaks her language, and who she might bump into on the way to school one morning.
After my first trip to the Dominican Republic, I pledged to myself that we would, one day, have a camp run and executed by Dominicans. Now, about seven years later, the camp director, program leaders and all but a handful of counselors are Dominican. Each year we bring in a few Peace Corps Volunteers and highly-skilled volunteers from the USA who add value to our program, but they are not the ones in charge. I think we’re finally doing aid right, and I’m not there.
Before you sign up for a volunteer trip anywhere in the world this summer, consider whether you possess the skill set necessary for that trip to be successful. If yes, awesome. If not, it might be a good idea to reconsider your trip. Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental. It slows down positive growth and perpetuates the “white savior” complex that, for hundreds of years, has haunted both the countries we are trying to ‘save’ and our (more recently) own psyches. Be smart about traveling and strive to be informed and culturally aware. It’s only through an understanding of the problems communities are facing, and the continued development of skills within that community, that long-term solutions will be created.
https://medium.com/race-class/b84d4011d17e
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
Post rating:
+
let me talk to her
Lucille
Lucille
Post rating:
~
Hispanics vs. Blacks: The Battle For "Preferred Minority" Status
by La Shawn Barber
As someone who loathes government-mandated race preferences, I look forward to years of laugh-riot fun as preference-loving blacks and Hispanics duel it out, fighting each other over government goodies.
I recently learned about a case involving a black cop named Kenneth A. Boyd in Wilmington, Delaware who claims he was passed over for promotion because he's black.
Boyd alleges that police chief Michael J. Szczerba promoted an undeserving Hispanic instead. Oh, why does this sound familiar? According to The News Journal, Szczerba "fostered a diverse police force," which is code for skin-color preferences. Only in this case, the Negro wasn't the "preferred minority."
A preferred minority group is one that is ostensibly under-represented in certain jobs, schools, etc. Asians also are a minority group, but they are not "preferred," particularly as far as college admissions are concerned, because they tend to be overrepresented. In fact, admissions for Asians may be suppressed in order to conform to liberals' notions of a proper racial balance. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Peter Kirsanow writes:
Asian Americans, though only four percent of the nation's population, account for nearly 20 percent of all medical students. Forty-five percent of Berkeley's freshman class, but only 12 percent of California's populace, consists of Asian-Americans. And at UT-Austin, 18 percent of the freshman class is Asian American, compared to three percent for the state... President Clinton worried that, without preferences, "there are universities in California that could fill their entire freshman classes with nothing but Asian-Americans."
Blacks have always been THE preferred minority group, but those days are coming to an end. Cases like Boyd's are only the beginning of the battles between Hispanics and blacks for preferred minority status. Hispanic groups are already urging the federal government to hire more Hispanics. Incidentally, whites are becoming a minority group in states like Texas and California. Will they one day become a preferred minority?
With illegal aliens working on the cheap, look for more stories about blacks crying,"Hispanic racist!" If for no other reason than Hispanics are supplanting them as "preferred," blacks should be speaking out against amnesty-for-illegal-aliens the loudest.
Here's some advice: Jump off the preference bandwagon now and start supporting hiring and promoting based on merit, seniority - anything but race. By the way, being against race preferences for college admissions doesn't mean one can't support admissions based on legacies, athletics or any other criteria. Racial discrimination, above any other kind, has its own unique place in our history. This country has fought a long and hard battle to make amends for enslaving blacks and sending them to the back of the bus and making them walk through back doors.
Our race is part of who we are, something as immutable as death and taxes. No country calling itself free and a respecter of individual rights should be mandating that one race of people receive preference over the other. No government should condone admissions and hiring that is based on the color of one's skin.
Government-mandated discrimination and preferences based on race were supposed to have been dismantled. That is what civil rights are about; these rights don't, can't and shouldn't guarantee that blacks or any other "minority" will be represented in any job or school in proportion to their percentage of the population.
The modern civil rights movement, the struggle for full citizenship status, has been corrupted. And the same people who support this corrupted form of "civil rights," which is nothing more than government skin trade, will reap what they sow.
But all that preaching is for naught. Chasing and pointing at a phantom white racist is much more profitable and satisfying than standing up for race-neutral policies. Perhaps after dozens more lawsuits in which blacks allege that Hispanics were hired or admitted at their expense, blacks who now support skin color preferences will finally understand that to sink or swim based on what you can do instead of on your membership in a preferred minority group is not such a bad idea after all.
https://www.nationalcenter.org/P21NVBarberStatus91006.html
by La Shawn Barber
As someone who loathes government-mandated race preferences, I look forward to years of laugh-riot fun as preference-loving blacks and Hispanics duel it out, fighting each other over government goodies.
I recently learned about a case involving a black cop named Kenneth A. Boyd in Wilmington, Delaware who claims he was passed over for promotion because he's black.
Boyd alleges that police chief Michael J. Szczerba promoted an undeserving Hispanic instead. Oh, why does this sound familiar? According to The News Journal, Szczerba "fostered a diverse police force," which is code for skin-color preferences. Only in this case, the Negro wasn't the "preferred minority."
A preferred minority group is one that is ostensibly under-represented in certain jobs, schools, etc. Asians also are a minority group, but they are not "preferred," particularly as far as college admissions are concerned, because they tend to be overrepresented. In fact, admissions for Asians may be suppressed in order to conform to liberals' notions of a proper racial balance. U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Peter Kirsanow writes:
Asian Americans, though only four percent of the nation's population, account for nearly 20 percent of all medical students. Forty-five percent of Berkeley's freshman class, but only 12 percent of California's populace, consists of Asian-Americans. And at UT-Austin, 18 percent of the freshman class is Asian American, compared to three percent for the state... President Clinton worried that, without preferences, "there are universities in California that could fill their entire freshman classes with nothing but Asian-Americans."
Blacks have always been THE preferred minority group, but those days are coming to an end. Cases like Boyd's are only the beginning of the battles between Hispanics and blacks for preferred minority status. Hispanic groups are already urging the federal government to hire more Hispanics. Incidentally, whites are becoming a minority group in states like Texas and California. Will they one day become a preferred minority?
With illegal aliens working on the cheap, look for more stories about blacks crying,"Hispanic racist!" If for no other reason than Hispanics are supplanting them as "preferred," blacks should be speaking out against amnesty-for-illegal-aliens the loudest.
Here's some advice: Jump off the preference bandwagon now and start supporting hiring and promoting based on merit, seniority - anything but race. By the way, being against race preferences for college admissions doesn't mean one can't support admissions based on legacies, athletics or any other criteria. Racial discrimination, above any other kind, has its own unique place in our history. This country has fought a long and hard battle to make amends for enslaving blacks and sending them to the back of the bus and making them walk through back doors.
Our race is part of who we are, something as immutable as death and taxes. No country calling itself free and a respecter of individual rights should be mandating that one race of people receive preference over the other. No government should condone admissions and hiring that is based on the color of one's skin.
Government-mandated discrimination and preferences based on race were supposed to have been dismantled. That is what civil rights are about; these rights don't, can't and shouldn't guarantee that blacks or any other "minority" will be represented in any job or school in proportion to their percentage of the population.
The modern civil rights movement, the struggle for full citizenship status, has been corrupted. And the same people who support this corrupted form of "civil rights," which is nothing more than government skin trade, will reap what they sow.
But all that preaching is for naught. Chasing and pointing at a phantom white racist is much more profitable and satisfying than standing up for race-neutral policies. Perhaps after dozens more lawsuits in which blacks allege that Hispanics were hired or admitted at their expense, blacks who now support skin color preferences will finally understand that to sink or swim based on what you can do instead of on your membership in a preferred minority group is not such a bad idea after all.
https://www.nationalcenter.org/P21NVBarberStatus91006.html