2elijah said:

It all starts in the home. I remember when I was a kid, I made a stupid remark about a darker-skinned classmate. My father overheard me, and set my ass straight.

PDogz said:

Preach that shit!!!

2elijah said:

Until you hear them speak (those that were born in the D.R.), they mostly look exactly as African Americans. Of those that were born here in America, they appear and sound exactly like African Americans. I tell my Dominican buddies "...you might as well get over yourself, because in the eyes of racist America, you're a [N-word] just like me, lol. You better go look a little deeper in that mirror, lol".

Dauphin, even if we don't agree on the Sammy Sosa issue on some points, I still enjoyed conversing with you on this topic and appreciate and value your opinion on this matter.

Adisa said:

ok
lets look at this through biological terms
something that is irrelevant to bias opinions
i dont condone plastic surgery but obviously this is something sosa shouldnt have been able to do because unlike a oversized nose or being fat or a truly disproportionate feature anomaly black skin is MEANT to be there on black people
its like when adolf hitler said blonde hair and blue eyes were perfect
scientifically,biologically,truthfully
he was wrong wrong wrong
blonde hair and blue eyes are a genetic reccesive mutation that isnt even supposed to happen,same with ginger hair and despite this scientific fact
theres still a stupid argument going on about 'which hair color/eye colour is better'
black skin is there as means of UV protection and skin colour is not there to be a sexual thing so it shouldnt be portrayed as being 'beautiful' or 'ugly'
just what it is...a skin colour

now if the nazis on this forum want to babble on about it being ok to bleach skin,or the black panthers want to babble on about it being ok to over-tan skin to a deliberately over dark degree
instead of getting your facts straight and at least looking at this logically rather than just barking at each other with your baseless feelings
then i dont see the point of this subject at all
..other than to argue

2elijah said:

I agree. It's awesome to have intelligent conversation and back and forth banter.

Zinzi said:

I disagree with this statement.

mutations are a natural part of all organisms obviously. They're suppose to happen, because whithin the larger of the whole population there are mutations that eventually lead to adaptations to the environment around them.


As people migrated to Europe, these 'mutations' developed which were advantages to the population---remember, along with the lightening of skin, hair, and eyes, came other advantages like a stockier frame that allowed for conservation of heat, etc. etc.


One need not look further at mutations in the black populations like that of the Austrailian aborigenese to see these mutations are advantages. A non-mix, native Australian has far more tolerant to temperature fluctuations (extreme heat during the day and extreme cold at night) then Europeans are (and certainly their African ancestors). The mutations which lead to the eventual changes in their body frame were advantages.


So yes, these differences are the results of mutations. But to say they're not supposed to happen isn't true.

Imago said:

Hmmm, I don't know if I can agree about the part you mentioned about the Africans not able to tolerate the heat and cold just like the native Australians. The Africans who travelled out of Africa, into colder temperatures were able to adapt to those temperatures, as they travelled across the globe. Only thing, their physical appearance changed due to the climate, because their bodies lacked the Vitamin D they were used to getting from the sun. Eventually their bodies adjusted to the various climates, even though their appearance changed over time, as they travelled across the globe during different periods in small and large bands.
eratures.

2elijah said:

I'm sorry, I'm referring to Africans as a continent of different ethnicities and races moreso than the bushmen of Africa, who have similar physical adaptations to Australians.

But my point is that adaptations, which are just mutations with advantages, are natural, normal, and not something that 'Isn't meant to be.'

We all have our differences. We all adapt to the environment around us. We all eventually mutate. There's no 'moral' or philosophical reason for it--it just happens.
I think picking on blond haired/blue eyed people for being mutants that aren't suppose to happen is a bit extreme--that's all.

Maybe Sammy's new look will grow on me. Because I felt the same way at first when Mike Tyson put that tattoo on his face. I was like... "Mike no! What have you done?!?". But now, I think it looks good on him.

SCNDLS said:

While there might be some crossovers here and there on a few things...maybe, I have to agree with Ms. SCNDLS. Not the same thing.

WTH do transvestites have to do with self-hatred anyway??? Transvestism is a fetish.

Transsexuals?? A person being born in the wrong body, who has to undergo and pass an insane amount of psychological testing before they can change their gender? How does that compare to skin bleaching???

ok
lets look at this through biological terms
something that is irrelevant to bias opinions
i dont condone plastic surgery but obviously this is something sosa shouldnt have been able to do because unlike a oversized nose or being fat or a truly disproportionate feature anomaly black skin is MEANT to be there on black people
its like when adolf hitler said blonde hair and blue eyes were perfect
scientifically,biologically,truthfully
he was wrong wrong wrong
blonde hair and blue eyes are a genetic reccesive mutation that isnt even supposed to happen,same with ginger hair and despite this scientific fact
theres still a stupid argument going on about 'which hair color/eye colour is better'
black skin is there as means of UV protection and skin colour is not there to be a sexual thing so it shouldnt be portrayed as being 'beautiful' or 'ugly'
just what it is...a skin colour

now if the nazis on this forum want to babble on about it being ok to bleach skin,or the black panthers want to babble on about it being ok to over-tan skin to a deliberately over dark degree
instead of getting your facts straight and at least looking at this logically rather than just barking at each other with your baseless feelings
then i dont see the point of this subject at all
..other than to argue

2elijah said:

Girl, this is all about denial of his African roots. Anyone who purposely does this without some underlying medical condition is seriously trippin, and so is anyone else who thinks this is a purely aesthetic change on the same level as tanning or nose jobs. And I don't need to hear ANY explanation whatsoever from Sammy cuz there's no way to classify this as anything other than self hate.


[Edited 11/13/09 15:25pm]

Zinzi said:

Of course it is, and so far the thread seems to be doing fine.
The thread is based on a tense subject, so some sensitivity is expected. Furthermore, as far as attacking, once in a while, you will have some that will jump on a thread and take it off topic, but then the thread will return to discussing the topic, in which is what we should be doing right now. Furthermore, no one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to read or participate in any thread on this site. The individual makes the choice on their own. So far I believe the thread is going pretty good. All everyone has to do is "stick to the topic of the thread" and they could avoid the off-topic stuff, so with the latter being said, I think we should try to stay "on topic".
[Edited 11/13/09 15:40pm]

uPtoWnNY said:

...and I'm sure your father had good reason to. I remember seeing Tyra Banks show about this topic. The saddest part was when a young mother, a dark-skinned woman said she will not be seen carrying a dark-skinned baby on her hip. Her own kids were in the audience and she told Tyra she puts bleach cream on her children, even her young baby every night. One of her older boys, about 8, looked like he started to cry after she said that. For many people, having dark skin and not being happy with it because they think society will not treat them right or accept them, that is when you know this issue becomes a psychological one, deeper than skin-deep.

PDogz said:

But no one accuses Tyson of trying to be Maori, rather than black . . . .
That he changed his appearance because of self-hatred, or because he has unresolved childhood issues regarding his appearance.

SCNDLS said:

WOW. I guess what he knows and feels about himself is irrelevant. I disagree with that sentiment.

Chinese talk about racism ahead of Obama trip
President shatters stereotype of the West being run by whites


By Keith B. Richburg
The Washington Post
updated 6:31 p.m. PT, Sat., Nov . 14, 2009

As a mixed-race girl growing up in this most cosmopolitan of mainland Chinese cities, 20-year-old Lou Jing said she never experienced much discrimination — curiosity and questions, but never hostility.

So nothing prepared Lou, whose father is a black American, for the furor that erupted in late August when she beat out thousands of other young women on "Go! Oriental Angel," a televised talent show. Angry Internet posters called her a "black chimpanzee" and worse. One called for all blacks in China to be deported.

As the country gets ready to welcome the first African American U.S. president, whose first official visit here starts Sunday, the Chinese are confronting their attitudes toward race, including some deeply held prejudices about black people. Many appeared stunned that Americans had elected a black man, and President Obama's visit has underscored Chinese ambivalence about the increasing numbers of blacks living here.

"It's sad," Lou said, her eyes welling up as she recalled her experience. "If I had a face that was half-Chinese and half-white, I wouldn't have gotten that criticism. . . . Before the contest, I didn't realize these kinds of attitudes existed."

As China has expanded its economic ties to Africa — trade last year reached $107 billion — the number of Africans living here has exploded. Tens of thousands have flocked to the south, where they are putting down roots, establishing communities, marrying local Chinese women and having children.

In the process, they are making tiny pockets of urban China more racially diverse — and forcing the Chinese to deal with issues of racial discrimination. In the southern city of Guangzhou, where residents refer to one downtown neighborhood as Chocolate City, local newspapers have been filled in recent months with stories detailing discrimination and alleging police harassment against the African community.

"In Guangzhou, to be frank, they don't like Africans very much," said Diallo Abdual, 26, who came to China from Guinea a year and a half ago to buy cheap Chinese clothes to ship back to West Africa for sale.

With the recession, his business has dried up, his money is gone, and he has overstayed his visa. Now, like many Africans here, he spends most of his days at Guangzhou's Tangqi shopping mall avoiding the police.

"The security will beat you with irons like you are a goat," he said. "The way they treat the blacks is very, very bad." He and others pointed out the spot where in July several Africans jumped from an upper-floor window to escape an immigration raid. One migrant was reported critically injured in the fall, and a large number of Africans marched on the local police station in protest.

The Guangzhou Security Bureau said in a statement at the time that it had a duty to check that foreigners living in the city were there legally.

Long-held prejudice
In the 1960s, China began befriending African countries, supporting liberation movements in Africa and bringing African students to China in a show of Third World solidarity. Lately, China has further deepened its ties to the continent, with Premier Wen Jiabao pledging $10 billion in new low-cost loans at a China-Africa summit in Egypt this month.

But that official policy of friendship has always been balanced against another reality -- the widely held view here that black people are inferior, while white people are admired as wealthy and successful.

"The kind of prejudice you see now really happened with the economic growth," said Hung Huang, a Beijing-based fashion magazine publisher and host of a nightly current affairs talk show, "Straight Talk." "The Chinese worshiped the West, and for Chinese people, 'the West' is white people."

Hung, 48, said her generation was "taught world history in a way that black people were oppressed, they were slaves, and we haven't seen any sign of success since. The African countries are still poor, and blacks [in America] still live in inner cities." Hung noted that Chinese racial prejudices extend to the country's own minority groups, including Tibetans and Uighurs — or anyone who is not ethnically Han Chinese.

The view of American blacks as poor and oppressed fits into the official government narrative of America as a place of glaring inequalities. China's most recent annual report on the United States' human rights record in 2008, released in February, made no mention of Obama's historic election. But it said, "In the United States, racial discrimination prevails in every aspect of social life."

"Black people and other minorities live at the bottom of the American society," the report said. "There is serious racial hostility in the United States."

Sherwood Hu, a Shanghai-based filmmaker, was one of the judges on "Go! Oriental Angel" who gave Lou high marks. "Before the Cultural Revolution, China considered black people our brothers and white people our enemies," Hu said. "But deep down, they're a little bit afraid of black people."

The racial animosity here taps into a prejudice dating to China's mainly agrarian past: Darker skin meant you worked the fields; lighter skin put you among the elite. The country is rapidly industrializing and urbanizing, but that historic prejudice remains. High-end skin-whitening products are a $100 million-a-year business in China, according to industry statistics.

'Are we racist?'
Chen Juan, 27, a secretary in an English training school in Beijing, regularly uses skin-whitening products and carries an umbrella on summer days. "For me, the whiter, the better. Being white means pretty," she said. "If someone looks too black, I feel they look countrified and like a farmer. . . . Being white is prettier than being black."

"In my impression, black people, especially Africans, are not clean enough," Chen continued. "To be frank, I just feel black people are too black. Definitely, I wouldn't consider having a black guy as my boyfriend even if he were rich."

P.C. Chike, a Nigerian businessman in Guangzhou who has been in China for five years, exports wigs and extensions made from Chinese hair to his home country. He married a Chinese woman from Beijing, and they have a son, with another on the way.

"Chinese don't like Africans. They don't like black skin," Chike said. "China trying to embrace Africa is a political statement. The question is, how do they treat black people?"

Li Wenjuan, Chike's wife, said she thinks racial attitudes are less coarse in Beijing than in Guangzhou, where the commonly used Cantonese term for blacks translates as "black ghosts."

Some here say Obama's presidency is causing a major shift in attitudes. Others, however, say many Chinese rationalize his election as a fluke of the American system or suggest that Obama, whose mother was white, isn't "really" black.

"It will be really interesting to see what happens when he comes to visit, because I really think the Chinese have a hard time with it," said Hung. "Nobody has dealt with this question of what this means to our sense of race. It's a kind of self-examination that Chinese — including myself — need to go through. Are we racist?"

Lou sees similarities between her life and Obama's -- she also grew up without her father, whom she never knew. She read Obama's autobiography and watched his campaign speeches on television. She learned how to chant "Yes, we can!" in English and calls Obama "my idol."

Reading the withering online criticisms of her talent-show appearance, she recalled, she came across one poster who asked: "Now that Obama is president, does that mean a new day for black people has arrived?"

"I think the answer is yes," she said. "Some Chinese people's perceptions of black people here have been transformed."

Researchers Wang Juan and Zhang Jie contributed to this report from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...gton_post/

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Interesting read, especially on this thread...


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...ngton_post

So nothing prepared Lou, whose father is a black American, for the furor that erupted in late August when she beat out thousands of other young women on "Go! Oriental Angel," a televised talent show. Angry Internet posters called her a "black chimpanzee" and worse. One called for all blacks in China to be deported.

Though I would concede that I have never heard anyone accuse Mike of trying to be Maori. That Mike is a fearsome warrior makes the Maori tattoo appropriate for him in my mind.

- The funny thing is the Chinese in Africa probably get treated better than the Africans in China lol; I guess that's what black people get for being so nice

Mstrustme said:

Docile.

why so serious, Sammy?

Graycap23 said:

Brainwashing is a mfer.
[Edited 11/16/09 9:12am]

Docile.