The best thing I have read in the NY Times in a month, is a comment.
3.
The above comment is a response to an article about howI find it amusing that the arrival of Barack Obama and Sonia Sotomayor on the national scene has sufficiently scared some people into thinking that the White Male Power Structure is in jeopardy.
Here's some advice, Ross: Look at the current cabinet, look at the Senate, look at the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, look at presidents of universities, look at editors of major newspapers, and indeed, look at the current slate of New York Times columnists. Do these groups seem racially and ethnically diverse to you?
Trust me: we are FAR from achieving equality in this country. The spaces of political, economic, and intellectual power are still overwhelmingly white and male.
Sotomayor and Obama represents change.
What do you think of it?
6 comments:
What do you think of it?
I think it's an excellent comment. I also think it's a damn shame how white people always seem to overestimate the number of non-white people around themselves. AND overestimate the "threat" those people pose. "Threat to what?" I always ask when I hear white people express such anxieties, "white power? Aren't you really saying that 'white power' is under threat?" That usually gets them thinking.
Yeah. No one wants to talk about power, power is always @ work at our schools, on our jobs, at our hospitals.
One of MY favorite topics.
Power comes from the bottom. Always.
i think s/he is right.
let's not get it twisted. just because the Obamas occupy the White House doesn't mean we've "made it" as a country. We've made strides, but things are certainly far from equal.
When the hood school I'm teaching at has a laptop for every child, books FOR EVERY CHILD, doors on the bathroom stalls, and isn't full-up with 1st year *ehem white* teachers, then MAYBE we are more on the side of equality than we are now. but until the achievement gap closes, we ease up off of criminalizing drug use, and we have equal amounts of whites/blacks/whomever running MAJOR companies, then we can talk.
I think we are looking at a case of media sensationalized white paranoia. White people focus so much on minorities FOR NO REASON. I think it is also fostered by the fact that the republican party did so poorly with the country the past eight years. If their is a time for more women and people of color to come to the forefront it is now.
comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeid=238780
^
I love colbert because he takes on the role of the ignorant white man and plays it to perfection. In the episode i posted a link to, he discusses from the perspective of a white man in fear of losing power what exactly he is scared of.. It was pretty interesting/entertaining and it immediately made me think of one of the posts i read on here a while back..
Thank you dude.
I think I may use this for my post on Whiteness as property. Ta-Nehisi has me thinking.
http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/race_in_2028.php
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