May I suggest checking out debunking_white and blackfolk as some other comms to look at? And if you're looking at the idea of anger and expressing it...yeah, blackfolk is unabashedly full of it.
And you know, I can understand where you're coming from with the "expressing anger is bad" and anger making one uncomfortable. My mother was a hotbed of irrational angry flare-ups, and as a child, I used to hate waking up to hear my mother and big brother screaming at each other. To this day, people yelling makes me incredibly uncomfortable and puts me on edge, even if they aren't yelling at me. Likewise, I tightly control my temper, because I know if I ever truly lost my temper, it would be a frightening, frightening thing, and so I rarely get angry, because it's rarely worth it.
Another aspect that might be interesting to look at is the idea of entitlement and guilt--I had a recent post ranting about cultural apropriation, but I didn't really touch of the idea of entitlement that's running through appropriation. There's an idea of sorts, like an undercurrent in American thought, that we *deserve* things--that we can take what we want because we want it, but without thought to how it will affect the culture we take from. And as a result, being called on it--and by the same token, being called on benefiting from white privelege--makes people gget defenseive and angry, because how *dare* someone suggest that either a) they can't take something or b) their way of viewing the world isn't the way that everyone sees it.
And I fear I'm rambling; I don't think I'm making very much sense, all things considered. I'm kind of veering into directions I hadn't intended to and thus, hadn't really thought about.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2006-06-23 09:52 am (UTC)May I suggest checking out debunking_white and blackfolk as some other comms to look at? And if you're looking at the idea of anger and expressing it...yeah, blackfolk is unabashedly full of it.
And you know, I can understand where you're coming from with the "expressing anger is bad" and anger making one uncomfortable. My mother was a hotbed of irrational angry flare-ups, and as a child, I used to hate waking up to hear my mother and big brother screaming at each other. To this day, people yelling makes me incredibly uncomfortable and puts me on edge, even if they aren't yelling at me. Likewise, I tightly control my temper, because I know if I ever truly lost my temper, it would be a frightening, frightening thing, and so I rarely get angry, because it's rarely worth it.
Another aspect that might be interesting to look at is the idea of entitlement and guilt--I had a recent post ranting about cultural apropriation, but I didn't really touch of the idea of entitlement that's running through appropriation. There's an idea of sorts, like an undercurrent in American thought, that we *deserve* things--that we can take what we want because we want it, but without thought to how it will affect the culture we take from. And as a result, being called on it--and by the same token, being called on benefiting from white privelege--makes people gget defenseive and angry, because how *dare* someone suggest that either a) they can't take something or b) their way of viewing the world isn't the way that everyone sees it.
And I fear I'm rambling; I don't think I'm making very much sense, all things considered. I'm kind of veering into directions I hadn't intended to and thus, hadn't really thought about.