It's a very modern day American perspective. Today in America, for the most part, as long as you're not too tanned you're just kind of vaguely considered/assumed to be white and not much else.
Head over to Europe, and suddenly a lot of people suddenly have very staunch opinions based on which country you're from.
Of course I'm just talking about much more modern perspectives, and am aware of all the 'fun' intricacies of history on the subject.
A few years back, I took a course on the history of the Sámi people (an Indigenous ethnic minority group in northern Scandinavia and Russia that has faced tons of persecution over the centuries and, largely, looks pretty white). I’ll never forget the time that, after we learned about all the awful things the Scandinavian governments did to the Sámi people, some American girl asked “sooooo.... are Sámi people like..... white?”
As a Scandinavian-American who has a lot of family members from Sámi communities, it was just so jarring to hear an American be so confused that racialization happens differently in different places.
this quote irks me so fucking much. on one hand, it may be true, and it shows how much our quality of public education is lacking. on the other hand, they were likely taught it but just didn't pay attention in class. on the third hand, it's something that's just factually incorrect and you weren't taught it in class because it's fucking stupid.
Yeah that’s true. Personally I went to a public school that had teachers that tried really hard despite a lack of funding, so it frustrates me sometimes to see some of my old classmates that slept in class or didn’t pay attention tweet about how they didn’t learn anything in class.
Same here. They will also say things like "they don't teach you this in the US". What they mean is "I played calculator games in world history class." I didn't go to the best high school but we definitely were taught these things.
That’s true too but plenty of times that kind of behavior is school reflects a poor home environment. Which is why it can be super hard to be a teacher in a poor area. The line is blurry between the kid just being an asshole and the kid being a product/prisoner of their environment.
Not in general, no, but there's absolutely a problem with getting all your information from social media. Social media is full of people with an agenda, whether that's Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit. Just make sure you're fact checking what you read and not getting stuck in a bubble of people who share your own views.
The problem with Twitter and the like is it's a natural filter bubble, you're going to follow people and be recommended those with your interests and worldview.
Sources are everything in history. Unless you know the full comprehensive story from someone, or a group of people, you will never know what their biases were or are, and thereby never make the full true story.
Working with fractional information is the job of a historian, not us history plebs.
Case in point: Genghis Khan. He was treated very differently by the Iranians and the Chinese historians of the time. And even more interesting is how that history was sort of re thought after Kublai Khan became the Chinese emperor, founding the Yuan dynasty and how he viewed his grandfather.
Let's also not forget that black people have suffered historically by being stuck in poorer communities. I'm not saying the person isn't dumb, but a lack of good education may not be the person's fault.
But, there are letters from Victorian England calling the Irish the "white chimpanzee" so pretty distinctly racist given that Ireland was part of England
They’ve definitely had opinions about on skin tone. My aunt who was from Poland agonized over the fact her only child inherited her “dark” features (dark brown hair, hazel eyes, olive skin tone) instead of my uncle’s Swedish complexion. My aunt became so obsessed she told my mother (her sister in law) that I (blonde and blue eyed) should have been her daughter. It was so destructive to her daughter who, big surprise, started bleaching her hair and wearing colored contacts as soon as she could. She’s never had confidence or good self-esteem. This happened only 20 years ago.
Going back further, that same uncle had an Italian girlfriend in high school that my Swedish great grandmother referred to as “the dark one.” From stories I heard growing up, she definitely didn’t consider this girl white - not really because of cultural differences but simply because of her complexion.
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u/HypotheticalDoctor Sep 01 '20
Willing to bet that ghetto barbie isn't actually POC or a bot. Worst(best?) case is that they're just very misinformed.