All:
What is it that allows people to decide that their crystal healing "rights"
should override the need of indigenous americans (indians) to protect their
ancestral lands, holy sites?
What is it that prevents such people from seeing the amazing disrespect that
these people of been slaughtered and unseated from control of their own lands,
but people who look just like the ones who did the slaughter now imitate the
culture and assert rights?
What is it that allows Voguish designers to see African traditional clothing,
copy it but then call these designs their own?
What is it that makes western feminist groups decide that a woman covering her
head is oppression of women, but "freedom" of women is to dress as sexualized
as possible and be used both for advertisement of cars to beer and to be
valued for only looks and sexual pleasure of men?
What is it that makes missionaries feel that only they know how to worship
God?
What is it that makes on generation of a culture eradicate a peoples sense of
their own culture and their later generations return to study and
"reinterpret" that same culture?
What is it that makes people think that they have "created" something new when
the simply record the traditional songs of a people, or bring in some
traditional musicians to add something to their music - and then think they
they are innovative not just cultural leeches?
What is it that makes women date men of another race, and at the same time
dismiss the women of that race - yet feel that they are not racist because of
who they date?
What is it that makes you forget that you do not become the race or ethnicity
of your husband?
What makes people forget the Salsa, Samba, Jazz, Reggae, Gospel, Blues,
Merengue are all overwhelming based upon African musical traditions brought
into the Americas by enslaved Africans?
What is it that makes a person with the left point of their tongue express out
rage at men not respecting their right to self-determination and identity, yet
with the right point of their tongue express outrage that people of color want
their own right to self-determination and identity respected?
What is it that is so upseting when African descendants in the Western
Diaspora and Africans born in Africa want to bond in familyhood without the
control of Europeans?
What is it that blocks the mind to understand that perhaps we DON'T think it
is so wonderful when you imitate our hair styles, wrap your heads like we do,
braid your hair the same way, imitate manner of dress (sari to kimono to
sarong to etc.), our jewerly, our body markings (henna to bindi), our way of
cooking and then claim you "know" us and decide to lecture us on how and what
we should be - in your effort to look "ethnic".
What is it that makes feminists feel they cannot be racists?
What is it that makes "donor" nations support corrupt leaders of a "third
world" nations, yet use the existence of those leaders as proof that the
people of that nation can't govern themselves?
What is it that makes some people mourn the threat to gorillas of a region,
but ignore the deaths of millions of people in that same region?
What is it that makes some people think that Columbus discovered America?
What is it that some people imitate (weakly) the musical style of another
people, marginalizing the creators as tokens of entertainment while they pat
themselves on the back for "saving" them, build the house of blues, and then
be suprised why the creators of that music aren't attending in droves?
What is it that prevents some from seeing that indentured servitude is not the
same as slavery?
What is it that makes some want to redesign Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
Jr. in the image most suitable for them to define the movement of a people?
What is it that confounds some in understanding that we can be both
emotionally and personally attached to our issues while at the same time being
highly intellectually knowledgeable on such topics?
What is it that some people think that academic study always overrides
someone's first hand experience?
What is it that passing a series of tests in a class, turning in a series of
assignments, makes some decide that they "know" how it feels to experience
life as a native american, a black person, an asian person, etc and experience
racism as such.?
What is it that is so strange that we want to lead our on our own issues?
What is it that so many people don't see the frightening similarity between
the "borg" of star trek and a group of people who seek to assimilate the
cultural traditions of others, destroy the place of the people, and claim
those traditions as their own "innovations" and "cultural trends" and can't
understand why that would be at the least,irksome?
What is it that some do not see the implicit disrespect in wishing that they
had pretended to be something they aren't, to assert their greater knowledge
about those issues over people who are?
What is it that some find so unacceptable that people speak on their own
experiences in their own voices?
What is it that keeps some from being so offended that someone dare tell them
"NO!, I do not accept your dominance over my cultural, racial issues?"
Nicole
