> However, I don't think it was necessarily a result of people viewing black people negatively, in fact, it often seemed to be admiration
But see, that's still racist. And the contexts in which it comes out makes it seem like an admiration of looseness, coolness, style, toughness, sexiness, grittiness, authenticity... an escape from just being a plain old person. Really, these are qualities involved in the identities many teenagers hope to construct. I'm just a plain old person too, but the culture makes me a repository for fantasy.
I'll go on a tangent here about something that really bothered me yesterday. There was a really interesting and informative article yesterday in the LA Times about an "Asian" propensity towards diabetes - an article which could help people with their health by informing them of something which they may not have been aware of.
and later: "Asians tend to have less muscle and more fat than Europeans of the same weight and height, studies show. So an Asian who isn't obese or even overweight could have enough fat to be in danger of getting diabetes, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as 'skinny-fat.'"
So how did white people get to be the baseline? The zeros of the world, the people that other people are a divergence from, the people that you have to know to understand? Why is an article about Asian diabetes instead an article about comparative rates of diabetes between Asians and whites? Some liberal arts major might call it a "microaggression", but as a engineering major, I am just literally looking at Asian health being described mainly in relation to the health of whites and trying to figure out the words to explain how that bothers me to white people who can't see it, without them erupting into rage.
But see, that's still racist. And the contexts in which it comes out makes it seem like an admiration of looseness, coolness, style, toughness, sexiness, grittiness, authenticity... an escape from just being a plain old person. Really, these are qualities involved in the identities many teenagers hope to construct. I'm just a plain old person too, but the culture makes me a repository for fantasy.
I'll go on a tangent here about something that really bothered me yesterday. There was a really interesting and informative article yesterday in the LA Times about an "Asian" propensity towards diabetes - an article which could help people with their health by informing them of something which they may not have been aware of.
http://www.latimes.com/health/la-me-asian-americans-diabetes...
Here's the question:
The article had nothing to do with white people, yet this was the graphic: http://www.trbimg.com/img-571584ce/turbine/la-me-g-asian-ame...
and later: "Asians tend to have less muscle and more fat than Europeans of the same weight and height, studies show. So an Asian who isn't obese or even overweight could have enough fat to be in danger of getting diabetes, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as 'skinny-fat.'"
So how did white people get to be the baseline? The zeros of the world, the people that other people are a divergence from, the people that you have to know to understand? Why is an article about Asian diabetes instead an article about comparative rates of diabetes between Asians and whites? Some liberal arts major might call it a "microaggression", but as a engineering major, I am just literally looking at Asian health being described mainly in relation to the health of whites and trying to figure out the words to explain how that bothers me to white people who can't see it, without them erupting into rage.