I don't understand this really

[james_davis_nicoll]

But apparently white people whose relatives were progressives back when that was dangerous get full credits for that even if they had no choice in the decisions or actions involved (In my case, because I was not born yet). Yay me! I can claim at least two generations of social liberals on my father's side and while I have never done anything of note in this field [1], at least I have not been an active impediment.

I understand that those people who were denied the basic rights due any human are supposed to be grateful to that handful of oppressors who somehow managed to meet the minimum level of human decency and who worked to mitigate some of the obvious social inequities of the time. Will the oppressed know to bask in the pearly white glow of my good luck in picking my relatives or will I need to hand out cards announcing that that my ancestors weren't the complete assholes most of the rest of their social class were at the time?

What else is covered by this policy? Can I claim to be an important engineer because my father and grandfather made notable (but distinct) contributions to that field?


1: I have voted for politicians who grudgingly did the right thing once the polls made it obvious which way the public leaned and after the courts made it clear they had no real choice in the matter.

Comments

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

Lyuda made comments about this. Not that she gets racist comments in Europe, but back in Europe that they seem to have an even stronger sense of OTHER...and she didn't mean it as a compliment. She notes that Ukrainians are among the worst.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

I was talking about exactly this the other day with a sports editor friend of mine. We were talking about race, Pittsburgh and the Steelers: Franco Harris of the Immaculate Reception was the first Italian-American and the first African-American to win the Superbowl MVP (and actually an elector for Obama). Hines Ward is African-American/Korean. Troy Polamalu is Samoan and Greek Orthodox.

But in Ukraine, instead of sports linking insular fans to the outside world, people boo their own African players, throw bananas at them on the field. I know it's nationalist dickery; but still, WTF? It's the third millennium, and no, being stuck in the Soviet Union for seventy years is no excuse.

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

I know it's nationalist dickery; but still, WTF?

I wish I could explain it, but, uh, I can't.

Ukrainians, and supposedly Russians and Belarusians, have got the "If you aren't one of us, you suck, big time and are especially stupid.

They LOVE to go on about how naive and stupid Americans are. This one has developed into a sore point for me.

Lyuda and one of her friends from Ukraine always jump on people there over this. If Ukrainians/Russians/whatever are so much smarter, how come they aren't the ones with all the money/power/whatever-the-topic-of-conversation-is while Ukrainians and Russians don't. The usual response is that there's some sort of conspiracy against the R/U/B/Whatevers that keeps them down.

Anyways, back on topic, they consider Georgians - not the American state - to be black people. Ditto Italians and Greeks. They even hold their noses wrt Serbs.

I just don't get it.

[anzhalyumitethe.livejournal.com]

Speaking of stuff like this, wtf is the conspiracy theory so damned powerful?! R/U/Bs eat them up. Others do too.

wtf, over.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

Because it's easier to blame someone else for your problems and play the perpetual victim than to A) admit that some of your problems might be self-inflicted, and B) do something about them.

[womzilla.livejournal.com]

I work in an office with three very bright Ukranians who all grew up in the Soviet era.

When the entire apparatus of government is devoted to lying to you, constantly, about everything, if you're bright you learn to put 2 + 2 together to equal 4, because otherwise you could well suffer horribly. Unfortunately, this makes it more likely that you will put together 1.49 + 1.49 and get 4, as well.

[martin-wisse.livejournal.com]

"being stuck in the Soviet Union for seventy years is no excuse", especially since you see the same behaviour in various other European countries (Spain for example) without that particular past.

[(Anonymous)]

Alexander Koblentz was born in Latvia, played chess for the (then independent) Latvian nation in the 1930s, wrote books in Latvian, trained Mikhail Tal, the Latvian world chess champion, and generally organized and worked in chess in Latvia for decades. When Latvia became independent he was denied a place in Latvian chess. He wasn't, you see, *Latvian* enough, never mind that his ancestors had lived there for centuries.

He lived out his years in Germany, as for that matter did Tal. Oh, the irony!

On a related note, a gentleman with a Georgian last name was about to win the chess championship of Georgia (some time in the 1970s) when he got a phone call the night before the last round to the effect that no Jew would win the Georgian championship, and live. He made sure not to win, and emigrated.

Serbian grandmaster Matulovic was sentenced to three years in prison for running over a pedestrian in the 1970s. He protested at the length of the sentence on the grounds that it was "only a Bosnian", a remark I had cause to remember when Yugoslavia broke up.

There is much you can learn from chess, indeed.

William Hyde

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Ghod, yes.

Ukrainians-recently-arrived-in-the-US are horrendous. I dealt with some of that ilk when I was student teaching.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

It's especially weird, considering that Ukrainian-Americans and -Canadians descended from earlier generations are decent, salt of the earth types (at least in my experience).

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Well, I think it's due to being a young lot. That and the evangelical church connections (a lot of our local Ukrainian-Americans and Russian-Americans locally are very heavily evangelical).

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

One thing about evangelicals from the former Soviet Union: they're treated in the Orthodox majority states very poorly. Somewhere between anti-Catholic discrimination in nineteenth century Britain and anti-Mormon discrimination in the nineteenth century United States.

But many secular post-Soviet R/U/Bs in the United States in NYC -- not really an evangelical hub, except for some Latin American groups -- act like they're white extras in an early Spike Lee movie. Some of the older ones make an explicit connection between the U.S.'s grassroots multiculturalism and the Soviet Union's nationalities policy, which leads to crazier right-wing fantasies than Dobbs times Limbaugh. Also, like Will's previous comment: they're so self-absorbed.