Comments on: White Picket Fences, White Innocence

By: blackskeptics

blackskeptics — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 20:40:19 +0000

In reply to mikecline. Eloquently put!

By: mikecline

mikecline — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 13:12:17 +0000

Great post. When you grow up and realize that behind every wholesome seeming thing you were ever taught that supposedly represented the best of the world was racism, bigotry, misoginy and hatred it makes watching leave it to beaver, reading the hardy boys and listening to country music almost impossible.

By: blackskeptics

blackskeptics — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:23:00 +0000

In reply to Alyson Miers. Pretty insidious yet of course confirms the normalization of whiteness as default human/hero/romantic/universal subject position

By: Chris in Cape Town

Chris in Cape Town — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:00:07 +0000

In reply to Bruce Gorton.

i remember those books too Bruce. They were probably these:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9RkOi_RDGIY/TdJCQ_mdVGI/AAAAAAAAAC0/3ayW7CghLJY/s400/kathy-and-mark.jpg

I had them in the late 70’s- horrible.

By: Bruce Gorton

Bruce Gorton — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:11:02 +0000

Hell I hated those books growing up (They were still used as primers in 1980’s apartheid South Africa).

Why is it that images supposedly of innocence are never innocent?

By: mouthyb

mouthyb — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 21:29:56 +0000

In reply to robertbaden.

I don’t assume everyone who is Hispanic will be different, I’m just sad to see how ubiquitous pale skin privilege/oppression is. I suppose that it is naive of me to feel like the experience of oppression is necessarily uniting, and rather stupid, to boot. The cruelty of the divisions perpetuated by racial privilege just keeps going and going, and ever so often I am reminded by it.

I am aware that my not seeing it all the time is a function of privilege.

By: Pteryxx

Pteryxx — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 20:06:54 +0000

In reply to sumdum. Um, no, it's not "WHITE gated community" being mentioned all over the place. Just "gated community" maybe with a fine-print mention of the percentage of minorities that live there. However, like you said, "gated community" implies good-white-people neighborhood, and that implication went completely over my head.

By: robertbaden

robertbaden — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:20:07 +0000

In reply to mouthyb. I have to ask, why do you think we "Hispanics" (I hate that term, it has as much meaning as Eurasian) are any different than other Americans? In whatever country/culture we came from, we have the same problems to one extent or another.

By: Alyson Miers

Alyson Miers — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:47:42 +0000

Speaking of white innocence/black interlopers, have you seen this fresh load of nonsense?

By: Dalillama

Dalillama — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 16:31:51 +0000

In reply to sumdum.

I’ve persistently seen figures that say the neighborhood is ~20% black in the news. Zimmerman has an established history of harassing his black neighbors as well, calling the police whenever he sees more than one at a time, jumping up at neighborhood watch meetings to accuse them of being responsible for any recent crimes/an alleged increase in crime generally*, etc. As I write this out, though, I realize that it only adds weight to the “protect the white neighborhood” narrative. The people who are into that narrative might easily consider this the time to double down on the vigilante shit, because now there are fewer legal means available to keep their neighborhood ‘pure.’

*Alleged by Zimmerman, as I understand it; I’ve seen no reports that crime has been increasing in that area.