Often when a white person wants to give his opinion on something racial, he'll preface it with something like "Now, I'm not black but..." or "Hey, I'm just white but..." or "Hey, I'm the spawn of Yakub, so take this with a grain of salt.."
Whenever someone says that to me, I just kinda shake my head and give them that annoyed "Will you just make your fucking point, white boy" look.
And then I started writing about gay marriage, and yesterday, about the ethics of outing, and I found myself in my head saying, "Now, I'm not gay but..." or "Hey, I'm just a straight guy but..." or "Hey, I'm totally obsessed with boobs, but..." It's the weirdest thing. You keep thinking to yourself, "Maybe I should shut the fuck up now." And yet, you don't...
Anyway, I think this is part of my continued evolution into a white guy. I'm digging on your music. I'm working at The Atlantic (first black guy, since Frederick Douglass). And now, I'm even lecturing oppressed minorities on how to respond to their oppression. Pretty soon, I'll be foreclosing on motherfuckers.
Yes, yes I know. Patience, young grass-smoker. Your time will come...
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Or you could just admit that everyone gets up in everyone else's business and that's just the way life is. Nothing wrong with it. If we leave only identity groups to talk amongst themselves with no outside input, you end up with lots of tiny little Republican parties yelling about purity.
And for a white guy you're awfully black.
Unless you've lost your sense of rhythm, your credit rating has magically skyrocketed, and you're no longer complimented on your surprisingly good diction, I'm pretty sure you're still black. We would have missed you, bruh.
Excuse you but my credit score is over 700. ;)
it's even worse: apparently you're becoming a *straight* white guy. not that there's anything wrong with that.....
...except that it means you can only speak your real opinions to other straight white guys. Or so my straight white guy friends tell me over shots of Crown Royal.
Yeah, the idea on the listener's part is: puh-leese do not bs me and try to apologize your way out of what you think; just make your case and let the chips fall where they may.
On the other hand, I do think sometimes being up front about conditions that might bias one's judgment is often, rather than an apology, an honest attempt at clarification, confiding cultural assumptions, but hey, I am just old, white, Jewish, male, straight, and a college instructor who sometimes teaches critical thinking; what do I know?
Huh?! You are the FIRST black guy to write for the Atlantic since Frederick Douglass?! Not taking anything away from your tremendous writing skills, but between you and Mr. Douglass, there was not another black male writer skilled enough to carry the torch? SMDH.
It's a running joke between me and Jeff Goldberg. It isn't literally true...I mean Du Bois wrote here too...*cackle*
http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/08/tanehisi_coates_is_the_new_fre.php
LOL. Oh ok....and, yes, Obama's white side was seriously on display when it came to his dancing skills on Ellen.
"Anyway, I think this is part of my continued evolution into a white guy"
No, you are not becoming white, you are becoming post-racial. You cannot see color anymore!
Ah, and soon enough you will also become post-sexual-oriented. You won't be able to see any difference between gay or straight. Just like Rudy Guliani.
That was pretty funny. As part of your continued evolution into a white guy, I suggest you hit your local Whole Foods for lunch.
Heh.
I knew you were coming over to our side when you said you planned on seeing the Star Trek movie. Shall we break out the cucumber sandwiches for today's open thread?
Since when being a Trekkie is only a white thang? I've been enjoying Star Trek reruns (the original episodes) since I was a kid growing up in the South Jamaica projects, watching them with my aunt, a black woman who also shared her love of the Twilight Zone and movie musicals with me -- both of which I still love to this day.
this black girl learned to love sci-fi from her mom, who learned to love sci-fi from her daddy, while growing up in the 1960s in lexington, ky.
Star Trek, in particular, has an appeal to people of color because Gene Roddenberry made an effort to show starfleet as part of a multucultural/ multuracial future, a total rarity on tv at the time.
And now that you are becoming white, can I start a comment this way: "yo, TNC, I think that..."
TNC,
I don't recall ever saying "Speaking as a white guy...." in a live conversation, but I might have said something like that on this blog, for a simple, mundane reason: you can't see me.
And now, I'm even lecturing oppressed minorities on how to respond to their oppression.
I always meant it as copping to who and what I am. But more to the point, it's because a lot of us get weird and self-conscious about discussions like this. We have an opinion, and we wanna be honest about it, but we don't come across as, y'know, d***s about it, either. We're afraid we're gonna come across as either smarmily patronizing Stuff White People Like types or dog-whistling Dittoheads. A lot of us are still trying to find our 'comfort zone' when it comes to all of this. And that leads to us qualifying our opinions. But if there's no need for that here, well, so much the better.
On a related happy note, you bringing this up made me realize something. There was a time not too long ago, when if someone, especially if that someone was a guy, made a statement supporting equal rights for gays, the phrase "I'm not gay but..." followed by the supportive statement was often added because, even though the person was supportive, they didn't want to be mistaken for gay.
It's great how that reading never even crossed my mind reading your posts yesterday, not just because of who you are (or seem to be via blog) but because it's rare that right minded folks even think that way. Not only are there so many more open gays than there were when I came out 16 long years ago, but there's so many more open supporters. It's one of those small things that I'd never thought about that is actually a huge deal.
I've done it before, and I have no excuse since I have a few similar things that grate on my like nothing else. My ex wife had a few things like "I have a question" then would proceed to ask a question, or would simply state "Question". I also know a few people who preface their pronouncements with "Let me say this".
In both the above, just ask the question; just say what you wanted to say.
I feel better now
Well, hey, if we can fall down and get up, you can fall down and get up.
The important part is, you recognized you fell down.
TNC,
Speaking as a forty-six-year-old white, straight, married, nearsighted, six-foot, North Carolina-born, brown-eyed, half-Jewish/half-Episcopalian, college-educated, overweight, beard-wearing, untattooed, unpierced, birdwatching teacher/ writer/ Chuck Jones fan/ guitar player/ Neil Gaiman fan/ dog owner/ rock climber/ Ralph Wiley fan/ college hoops watcher/ Ursula K. Le Guin fan/ blogger/ soccer coach/ Robyn Hitchcock fan/ Anglophile/ poet/ Michael Franti fan/ evolutionist/ drama director/ comic-book critic/ touch-typist/ Taoist/ Pete Townshend fan/ chopstick user/ coffee drinker/ liberal/ Johnny Cash fan/ hayfever sufferer/ piano player/ Joss Whedon fan/ ex-debate coach/ book reviewer/ David Quammen fan/ public speaker/ dinosaur model collector/ ex-virgin/ ex-Northern Exposure viewer/ fantasy football player/ guest of Martha Stewart/ Subaru owner/ Doonesbury reader/ theater technician/ hiker/ ex-radio announcer/ Virginia resident/ dungeon master/ Octavia Butler fan/ French speaker/ singer/ father of two, I just have to say that I can no longer remember what my point was.
I think we can all agree on that.
Just wait until you're dishing out $200+ for Rolling Stones tickets, or drinking margaritas with Parrotheads in a stadium parking lot.
If you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain...
I'm not much into health food. I am into champagne.
Rupert Holmes, Original Gangster.
Heh.
Seriously, though: I think the impulse to preface opinions with "I'm not [insert social subgroup here], but..." is one that wants to avoid presuming a full grasp on another person's experience. Maybe that's not such a bad thing....
On your rapid descent into crackerdom: go on and embrace the blend, dude. No matter what you do, your kid is still likely, sooner or later, to think that your existence is so much more "ethnic" (eew, what's a better word?) than his own. The more we live with each other, the more we get each other. To me, that's definitely a good thing.
Part of what makes our culture fascinating is the opportunity for exploration within it. Often we don't make as much of this as we could. You are out in front carrying a flag for teh Geeks, teh Children of Black Panthers, teh Baltimore-born WOW-loving Cowboys fans. Please keep carrying your flag into unfamiliar territory. Ain't gonna make us magically post-racial, but it might make us a little less fearful of what we still don't know.
Well, it's a wise pre-emptive debating tactic, n'est-ce pas? Argument from authenticity is the premier mode of our age. If I have lived it, and you've thought about it a lot, I win. But it's human to have an opinion on everything, any big issue of the day. Humans like to argue. So in that sense it's merely polite to preface, by admitting up front that I'm not trying to stomp on your lived experience, assuming my thoughts are superior to that. That's an insult. In fact, despite the sensitivities of our age, I suspect that that's always been an insult. You don't teach your grandma to suck eggs. Or at least you say, "Hey, listen, Grandma, I know you've been sucking eggs ever since that last tooth went in '93, and I ain't, but I'd heard about this new egg-sucking method, it sounds kind of interesting, makes the eggs taste better, you might want to check it out."
"I'm working at The Atlantic (first black guy, since Frederick Douglass)."
Assuming that's at least close to the truth, I have to say that's fucking scandalous. And it's not just Atlantic - I just googled "black writers Harper's magazine" and came up with five entries, starting with James Weldon Johnson in '28. I guess it's naive to be shocked at this late date, but what have these fucking editors thinking ? Ironically, H.L. Mencken - whose iconoclasm included the postures of a reactionary crank and an anti-semite - probably did more via American Mercury to promote black authors (who at least in the persons of George Schuyler and Zora Neal Hurston also ended up as zealous rightwing cranks) than the more conventionally liberal editors of The Atlantic and Harpers. Too bad...
"Assuming that's at least close to the truth" - I added that qualifier only because you made reference to this being something of an inside joke and to DuBois having written for the mag.
Given your sketchy background, you'll have to write a post on the CRA having caused the economic debacle for your transformation into a white guy to be credible.
"Stuff White People Like" was alternately hilarious and painful for me to read. One paragraph would make me think "Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, I know a dude like that" and then the next would be "ow. I resemble that remark."
Instead of post-racial, let's attempt a post-SWPL collective. We can create a blog called "Stuff Everybody Likes". I think it would be handy to have a reference point of just good ol good stuff that everyone can relate to. It could be quite liberating, and can be used at parties to reference neutral topics. Furniture. Steak. Jeans. Stevie Wonder. Reliable automobiles. Expensive watches. Dogs. Creamsicles. Mom. Ganja. Tom Jones. Google. Nike. The smell of popcorn. And watching people fall over in a humorous, non-injurous way.
I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Ah, the prefaced sentence. I am quite familiar with this beast. I had a boss a decade or so ago who would constantly barrage everybody in our department (which was exclusively white, male, hetero) with racist, sexist, and anti-gay commentary. However, he would preface each such statement with an (in)appropriate disclaimer. Such as "I'm not racist but...", "I don't hate fagots but..".
For a long time I couldn't understand why his bigoted comments bothered me so much more than those of others. (He was hardly the only offender.) Eventually I came to the conclusion that his pathetic attempt to distance himself from his own naked bigotry was what really got to me. It added an elegant touch of hypocrisy that was missing from the rather bland bigotry espoused by his peers.
Then a few years after I left that job I caught myself doing almost the same thing. (Though I cannot now remember the subject of my own comment.) After stopping mid-sentence in horror, I was forced to explain myself. I was then rightfully subjected to much ridicule. Fun times.
Nah, that's the contrapositive of what he's saying.
Discounting one's own biases is what responsible people do when they want to continue a conversation.
Discounting the impact on others of your bigoted statements by attempting to deflect responsibility for your bigotry is an adolescent behavior that ends dialogue.
What you've got here is your classic no win situation. You apologize in advance by acknowledging that you have a different perspective, it's annoying. You don't apologize in advance, you seem like an unaware ass bloviating about stuff you have no intimate knowledge of. Between anyone less than best friends, I vote for the preemptive qualifier face-to-face, just in the name of civility. On the other hand, it's kind of fun to be anonymous online, taking a certain point of view and not "qualifying."
I would suggest that if one feels the need for a disclaimer, "I'm no expert...", or "I can't speak from personal experience..." - which implies the same thing as the more clumsy, more specific quailifier is sufficient and doesn't sound quite as self-evident, patronizing or passive-aggressive. It's actually not a bad frame of reference for most discourse in which one happens to be offering impressions and semi-random opinions rather than actual experiences or truly well-informed analysis.
TNC, welcome. Henceforth, you shall be known among us as Troy Nicholas Coates. Your orientation package will be arriving shortly.
Troy? Troy??? LOL
That made me chuckle out loud.
Of course, there is Troy O'Leary, who has a plaque in the other wing of the Reggie Cleveland Hall of Fame. Look up Bill Simmons to see what I'm talking about...
I know a few black Troys. Why can't it be Travis?
I'm gonna have to go with Tucker. Just think how a bow tie would look.
*Tad* Nicholas Coates. Short for Thaddeus.
We'll call you Taddy-N when we greet you at the country club grill.
That "patience" thing is something that I've commented on before. I'm don't believe for one minute that you're evolving into a white guy. But, evolving nonetheless. And, out loud and in front of everybody.
As is the case for many of us, you're takin' being "black" in some new and needed directions. SOMEbody with a "voice" has got to tell us it's alright. You know how "we" get if there is a broadening of view - we're "actin' white". What is that word y'all young bloggers use...? Oh, yeah: "Meh"!
Then, again..... there is that foreclosin' on "maaahfuckas"(that, folks, is the Philly pronunciation of the word as I heard YEARS ago being uttered by one Bill Nunn. Yep. "Radio Raheem" Bill Nunn from back in our college days) thang. :-)
In addition to the actualization in process state of affairs, you are a genuine HOOT, TNC. You be crackin' me UP, man.
TNC has apparently never seen what happens to white people who voice any opinion* on race in college. It's UGLY.
*Quoting Rush Limbaugh or Pat Buchanan is not an opinion. Record players don't have opinions.
THANK YOU! Thank you TNC for coming to that conclusion on your ownsome. It's quite a hilariously tenacious meme for us hip gays to trace, almost as much as "a coming out story -- with a twist." Google that and "I'm not gay but" and sit back with your buttered Redenbacher for a wild joy ride into the lesser-acknowledged cliches of gaydom. Heck, throw in "no homo" just for an encore.
My only partly original thought to add to this discussion is that homosexuality is somewhat less colorblind than "race" (in distribution, at least) -- and so there'll always be a greater pressure to out yourself as straight to set the context of a discussion about gays. Most of the time, people can tell you're white, at least in person or from your profile. Brunos and Perezes aside, most gays feel just as much pressure to state their status when talking about their own issues as straights do when trying to contribute to the "gay debate."
Sometimes the "I'm not gay, butt" preface can be helpful -- who isn't touched by a straight offering support for gays, especially when discussing with other straights? But usually it's just blind reflex to disassociate. That's too bad. If it's any consolation, my bff gets totally turned on by guys who start off sentences that way. It's kind of his "in" to convince them otherwise through semantic ju-jitsu. Works about 30 percent of the time in person.
In terms of using the preface phrase because you don't want to make any assumptions about someone's actual experience, just stick with what you know you think, make room for people to smack you down, and both sides can learn. Trying to defuse any spirited debate by immediately admitting you don't have a sure-footing about what you're talking about surely stifles the exchange of ideas, no?
I'm sorry, I meant to type:
My only partly original thought to add to this discussion is that homosexuality is somewhat MORE colorblind than "race" (in distribution, at least)
popcorn fingers ...
If we are going to be post-Stuff White People Like, in the web site sense, then do we also have to be post-stuff white people actually like? Last time I checked in, that included lawnmowers, golf, gardening, and church. Being the golf-and-lawnmower type of white person doesn't keep you from drinking expensive coffee, of course, but it does seem to keep you from spending all afternoon in the coffee shop typing on your laptop.
Which is a round-about way of getting to the question of what else goes on "Stuff Everybody Likes." What's the current sentiment on golf? Little League? Knitting? Fishing? Volunteering with the Red Cross? You know, all the non-hipster classics.
I like the "Stuff Everybody Likes" idea, but it's ultimately as futile as "Stuff White People Like," "Stuff Nerds Like," or (to use TNC's recent example) "Stuff Black Churchgoers Like."
Even within the same group, people disagree constantly. I hate mayonnaise, which apparently means I'm not white, and I've never had any use at all for NASCAR, so I'm not Southern, I don't know anything about grilling, so I'm apparently not male, and I've never watched an episode of Babylon 5, so I'm not even a good nerd.
Like everyone else, I'm unique.
Cash, you can be white and loathe mayo, as long as you're Jewish.
Or Italian, Greek... you get the picture.
But what's to understand about grilling? I think cave men probably had the basics figured out.
The question is, has TNC's dancing skills improved? If not, he's been white for awhile
Also, it'd be Tim Nicholas Coats, a la the Brothers Brothers.
Hold on there, soldier. Our friend may have crossed a threshold, but he's nowhere near being worthy of Tim status yet. You have to be nearly transparent for that honor.
Just ask Tim Meadows.
This reminds me of MLK's Mountaintop speech- maybe the most positive example of that trope, or a utilization thereof, in the white girl's letter:
"You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?" And I was looking down writing, and I said, "Yes." And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, your drowned in your own blood -- that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what that letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply,
Dear Dr. King,
I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School."
And she said,
While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I'm a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze.
And I want to say tonight -- I want to say tonight that I too am happy that I didn't sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn't have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution."