I’d say this is a must-read for teachers, but we teachers know this. Everyone else: YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE AN EDUCATOR…

dagseoul:

“And so, you know, we can be poor in spirit. (Laughs) And I don’t even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing. It can be here today and gone tomorrow.” —Ann Romney

Sometimes we can get so much from so little.

I’m interested in how capitalism insinuates its ethics into…

twlboaj:

dagseoul:

twlboaj:

Um… that makes NO sense.

A person can be white,

or they could be Asian,

“being white” =/= “being Asian”

Being white is an identification that is neither an ethnicity nor a nationality.

Riiiiight, because Europe doesn’t exist anymore, sure. These people don’t have an ethnicity! They’re just the enemy! 

You racist asshole.

(Also, your tag “white girl problems” isn’t really accurate, since I’m Japanese.)

And good job excluding the rest of my argument, that makes you look SO VERY academic and thorough. 

Listen. I think you actually agree with Dag if you’d read his entire post and mull it over. What he’s saying is that there is a social construction called “white,” and “white” is used to define who is “NOT-white.” White is not an ethnicity or nationality. What is a “white person’s” ethnic background? What is their country/nation? Once you ask those questions, you realize that “white” is really not an ethnic identifier. All “whiteness” does is define who is and isn’t white. In the U.S., we are called Asian, because we are not-white.

Now, that being said, Dag is saying that there are white girls and guys, usually well-meaning liberals, who try to pull the colorblindness crap: I’m not white, you’re not black, I don’t see color. In that instance, Dagseoul and others are saying that they are ignoring the fact that they are indeed benefiting from the white social construct, but refusing to acknowledge those who are not. 

Does that make sense? 

I don’t know how long or how hard you’ve thought about your “ethnic-national-racial-color” identity, but it’s time to start thinking a bit more critically. I don’t mean that in a patronizing way at all. I am saying this because it helps with the painful reactions we, POC, might have during a race conversation. Because being not-white, different, is a sore spot with a personal and socio-political history. 

dagseoul:

hangama:

charlieparker-onheroin:

voicesofearth:

dagseoul started following you

I should probably be on my best, most intelligent, and most socio-politically observant behavior for the foreseeable future, to earn this haha

lol no my…

Sometimes he holds farts until I touch his arm or something. Then I test him by touching his arm repeatedly, for different lengths of time. Dag is definitely a 13 year old. He is a grown man who literally runs around our small apartment. Like the ADHD child he is. 

dagseoul:

seltaire asked you: There was a phrase you used called “betraying white privilege” - what do you mean by that?

I use it in a specific context. I have had to learn three things. Bear with me. I was thinking about how to answer your question and wanted to say three things. I haven’t written this down before. So, it’s likely to be a little rough.

1. I had to learn how to listen and observe. As a writing teacher, I can promise you that white people often do not know how to listen and observe without relying on highly constructed white-notions of reality. Constructed whiteness is an imagined reality that instructs us how to understand what we observe. It’s like a White Super Ego. I began learning how to observe when I was a young child in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the 1970s. Observing overt racism, overt Christian bigotry and sectarianism, overt white power, overt hate and listening to the responses to those things from all people involved helped me learn how to see whiteness in a critical way even at a young age. I have had a distinct distrust of my whiteness since elementary school. Nevertheless, this is an ongoing lesson. It’s not as if this lesson will ever end.
2. I had to learn how to resist feeling guilty when confronted with the social problems white power and whiteness are responsible for cultivating and encouraging. I’m white, but when we talk about whiteness, I don’t make the discussion about me. To knee-jerk an emotional response and to wallow in guilt is never appropriate. To be white is not to be guilty of something. And this is a significant lesson. To resist guilt is to be able to remain engaged with the discourse. To dwell in guilt is to personalize the problems. It encourages a ME and THEM paradigm for examining whiteness and people of color. It reinstates the traditional white power structure, I’d argue, reinforces it.
3. I had to learn to resist denial. The third lesson is the most important of the three and actually unites the lessons. You cannot have learned the value of one of the three without having learned the other two. They go together; they inform each other. I can say “that’s not me,” but I cannot become not-white. I inherited a privilege I cannot lose and simple rejection is useless. Many social justice whites deny their whiteness, which is a simple rejection. We see it on tumblr all the time. “I don’t identify as white.” Quite frankly, denial is a response to feeling guilty, which is why these folks will also almost always claim that people simply want them to admit some sort of guilt.

While we should not deny whiteness, we can betray it. That takes honesty and a commitment to participate in discourse where, though my voice is welcome, it’s not the essential voice. My voice is useful only in common with a chorus of other voices. And white people forget this because they cling to racist notions of what it means to be an individual.

Betraying white privilege, for me, is the one thing that keeps me honest in discourse about justice, equality, liberty, freedom, civil disobedience, rights, ethics, et al. Betraying white privilege is to resist denial and guilt. I will often write “we need to betray whiteness rather than deny it.”

I think the last quote I reblogged from bell hooks is instrumental to my understanding of all of this.

dagseoul:

fascinasians:

“Asian women just want to be loved!”

This is pretty much one of the most angering things I’ve read. Why? Because I (and many other Asians) have heard the same comments so many times we’ve lost count. This whole “White guy to the rescue” thing got old quick.

Hey, Praise, check this out.

What a terrible situation. She had to sit there and listen to it, while some older white business guy went on and on before he signed the contract. This is why I could never go into business. I’d have gone hulk on his ass. Green skin, torn pants, the whole bit. 

fascinasians:

bluepeets:

pdmoua89:

SHIT WHITE PEOPLE SAY TO ASIANS!

All the damn time. 

LMAO. I’m so glad I stopped hearing this stuff in middle school… mostly.

Yup. This is GOLD! 
-every single day- 

TEEHEE!! Hilarious.

dagseoul:

asianamericanfilm:

“Shit White guys say… to Asian Girls” by By Cindy Fang and Peter Podgursky - I normally don’t posts skits, but since the most popular post on this tumblr is the ”Ko-Ni-Chi-Wa” by Leanna Yu, a film dealing with Asianphiles. Here is another perspective. 

I had to post this for Praise. After we watched that things white girls say to black girls video everyone is talking about, my wife wanted to do this. Fang beat her to it.

I just told her that she should make one called things white husbands’ families say to Asian wives.

dagseoul:

Elite schools, in the US, may permit more than around 50% of its incoming Freshman classes to be white but not to be Asian.

NOTE, added after publishing: This is generally speaking and a note about the actual existence of what is called an Asian ceiling—that more qualified Asian students apply to elite universities and colleges in the US than the schools will accept. The schools require much higher standards for entrance for Asians than for white students. The schools all have many more white students than Asian students by design. It’s a well-known problem and sociologists debate its fairness. It’s therefore a sign of generally acceptable white privilege in the United States. If you want actual stats, you can find them by searching for the school of your choice and the word “diversity”. Most elite schools publish annual stats. Yale, for example, had 58% white and 19.8% Asian students enter its Class of 2015 last year. Overall Yale has a 42% white population. However, 17% of its students claim “unknown” as their identity. So, 42% is most certainly low. It’d be great to see how many Asians applied and were rejected and compare to how many whites applie and were rejected, but that data is much more difficult to obtain. Maybe a phone call to The Registrar, followed by an email. Every school has access to this data. (Over 27,000 applied for Class of 2015 and only 1,351 were accepted. Very elite.)

You all should know I don’t post made up bullshit on dagSeoul. Before coming to me with complaints, look some shit up for yourself. I don’t like being The Authority on shit. Sometimes, I like posting a sentence or two rather than an essay.

Shits and giggles.

dagseoul:

slamdanceonyourgrave: Hi there, I’m just sorta confused. Would you be able to explain how “Tolerance is at the core of whiteness”?

White is a legal construction. It’s a legal construction with a social component we call “whiteness” and a powerful ideological apparatus we call “white power”.

White people tolerate others. We are taught to tolerate others. This isn’t taught to see others as we imagine ourselves. Tolerance is different. Tolerance is an insistent and persistent marker of social difference that dictates a vertical hierarchy. I see difference and I can authorize it. That’s a problem.

According to tolerance, (any) others bear the burden of that tolerance in two ways: a demand to tolerate and a demand to be tolerant. White power works to construct all individuals as white subjects. I’m going to focus on people of color, but tolerance presupposes an established straight, white, Christian, male, and masculine order. When I say whiteness, the other qualities are implied though unstated. This power structure is not oppressive for white people in the same manner it is for people of color (poc) for what I hope are obvious reasons. White power is always more oppressive and consistently more oppressive for poc. The culture of whiteness that develops includes some of the basic principles for ideal American living: freedom, equality, liberty, justice, humanity, et al. There is no aspect of our culture that white power does not affect. Tolerance is a liberal formulation of living that insists we tolerate difference in others. Tolerance as a principle is not to be confused with the ordinary verb to tolerate or the adjective to be tolerant. You and I may very well be tolerant people.

We see on tumblr, for example, that many white liberals, progressives, and feminists like to practice tolerance. What this means, what it always means, is they can choose to be tolerant or not and others must tolerate them. That’s white power. It’s pernicious: white people demand a poc presence in the discourse of tolerance, but never as equals. Whiteness always permits white people an excuse for patronizing and authoritative positions in public discourse. Tolerance is bossy, you can say. In ally discourse, for example, the allies always start out with great intentions. Things always go well for a little while. When traditional white tropes—for example, appropriation—creep into their posts, then they get angry when poc call out the trope. Tolerance and its demands becomes visible.

bonus material. this may or may not be related. but it popped into my head. so, you get it:

If you’d like to see how this works in a literary manner, you can read much of the Harlem Renaissance literature, especially the poetry. Or, pick up William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, A Light in August, or Sound and the Fury. Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man deal with black protagonists who have to come to terms with tolerance in white culture, among other things. And those books make great companions if for no other reason than the authors were writing about the same thing from different ideological perspectives. They did not agree with each other, but they recognized similar destinies for their characters. Other bloggers might be able to give you contemporary examples. Jonathan Franzen’s newest book, Freedom, is about white people who are intolerant tolerant people, which is part of what I’m getting at. I don’t like Franzen, though.