Saturday, October 06, 2012
A little insight into the "angry young black man"
When I was younger I used to wonder what the "angry young black man" was angry about. Now that I have a little insight I no longer wonder why he is so angry, but rather why is he not a lot angrier. The wall of ignorance about Africa in the white world is so high, so deep, and so wide that there is no way to scale it. Rather people here have just learned to live with the lies, distortions, and racist stereotypes perpetrated about them abroad.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
Why should someone be angry about someone else being ignorant about them.
Here in Eastern Europe I noticed they still have an inferiority complex, that, I imagine, was developed back in the communist times by Western propaganda. You tell a local person that you're having a problem with, say, electric company, and the inevitable response is: 'what do you expect, this is Hungary.'
They truly, sincerely believe that everything in their country is much-much worse than in the US and Western Europe (the US especially): corruption, services, crime; every-fucking-thing. In fact, I suspect it's actually the same or even better, for the most part.
Why should people be angry about being consistently negatively stereotyped? Because it denies them respect and more importantly it disrespects the truth.
Everybody is stereotyped by everybody else. A place - Congo, Russia, America, China, Sweden - is mentioned - and immediately something comes to mind, a stereotype; this is how our brains work. And that's a long way from racism; racism is a pseudo-scientific belief.
Racists are not exactly ignorant; it's more likely that they are quite knowledgeable (like the internet character named Steve Sailer), they just select and interpret facts in a certain way.
Things like claiming most Africans in Europe are criminals are racist stereotypes and they do not have to have any pseudo-scientific basis. The generalization and ascription of inherently negative traits to an entire group of people defined by ancestry or lineage is racist.
I dunno, to whatever extent this stereotype does exist, I don't think it's necessarily defined by ancestry or lineage.
You'd have to ask the person holding this view: do you suppose they are criminals because of their ancestry, or because of environmental and historical factors? Would a person with African background born into a middle-class European family be likely to become a criminal?
Then you'll know.
I really like and agree with this post. I am one of your mom's friends and although she and I have very different views...she did mention that I would like what you had to say.
Thanks for stopping by to comment Sara.
Post a Comment