After reading an article today during my commute about racial violence suffered by a white family in Akron, Ohio at the hands of a group of black teens, I was reminded of a lecture given in one of my sociology classes at UVa. The lecturer was a young white male who couldn't possibly have had his Ph.D but you know...whatever. He mainly taught a class on White culture and how White people are perceived as 'colorless' and 'culture less' because the pool of knowledge usually prescribed for narrow mindedness is flooded with the teary eyed story of some other minority. What is most provocative about this is that this view fully endorses, perhaps even hegemonically, 'reverse racism' (or possible racism towards all groups of people) and the ideology that it couldn't possibly exist. Only Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, & purple people eaters can be discriminated against right? Ugh, where is Barney when you need him?
At any rate it is not easy to draw from memory many top news stories about the following: White people protesting, being arrested, sitting in the back of the bus (or the metro for christ sakes they could do that every once in awhile), evading taxes, or fighting about the baby mama status of a woman. One must ask themself, "Now why might that be?" Because no one is tuned in about White people. White people are the bottom line, the standard and so long as hip-hop "moves" people and the hispanic population lets dirty diapers roll out of their driveways, white people will ALWAYS be the anti-bad, the opposite of all those 'crazy', underrepresented cultures.
I am not making a statement about stereotypes more so than I am more effectively saying that different languages, skin colors, religions, socioeconomic statuses, etc. will always be more interesting than the melodrama of the people who look like or are deemed to be the ones that can be here freely and without scrutiny for their lifestyle, aka football and Coors light, ugh. I believe in culture wholeheartedly, everything that makes a person is their culture. Culture colors the very lense that we see things through.
We should start holding those who consider themselves White accountable for the things that are deemed a part of their culture or more importantly the things that they deem a part of their culture, even if those things are born from stereotypes. This means that black people can be perpetrators, hispanic people can be perpetrators, asians, purple...
Every culture has stereotypes, most of which are true, so there's no reason for any party to be offended. Whites can be the victims of hate crimes as proven by the particular story I read and many other everyday occurences.
As I am currently working on a project where I'll end up collecting and organizing a bunch of data about underrepresented groups in the government as well as some more specific organizations, I have come into contact with some great information. Right now, the most underrepresented group in the government is white women. WTF?! Who would have thought? Now I have my own ideas about government hires and undoubtedly why a lot of them are not white but I won't get into that solely because I like money and I like having a job.
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