See now, Pom I haven't heard before, and I don't even know what that means. :) And thank you for having these interesting conversations with me! I don't mean to come across as lecture-y or anything, but it sounds like we're on the same vibe and just sharing our experiences and thoughts and cultural differences.
Oh, and yeah, people say honky here, too. LOL. The connotation is kinda southern, hick, redneck here; I don't know what it would be in England!
Ah ha, the muggle point about wanting to be special might be a thing for some people, that's true.
As for your accent being the giveaway - I've heard of plenty of Americans overseas pretending to be Canadians because so many people hate Americans but like Canadians, and our accents are mostly close enough, unless they can't feign the difference in the word "about," ha ha.
The some happy, some not about a label comes up a lot in the LGBTQ community over "queer." Generally, I'm right around the generational gap where my age and people younger have reclaimed it and use it to describe ourselves, but a lot of older LGBTQ folks who grew up with that being a major slur HATE that we use it. Nobody is forcing anyone to use or not use a label for themselves, but man do the arguments rage.
If I say that we are the same species, then at least that's something which can't be disputed (you're not going to burst my bubble on that are you? ;D).
I'm secretly fae! :D
That's cool that you were able to have that experience in school. That's what I'm sure the GOAL is when people say, "I don't see color," it's just the unpleasant reality of society makes that not possible for most people. When I was a kid in New Jersey, honestly, people described themselves more by nationality or religion or ethnicity than race. It was, you were Irish or Italian or Puerto Rican or Korean or Jewish; even religion was designated with nationality - I was raised Irish Catholic, not just Catholic. The only exception really was black, because so many African Americans don't know what nation their ancestors came from. But when I got to Colorado, I literally walked into the lunch room on the first day and the kids were mostly self-segregated by race! I had never seen that before! It so didn't happen in my little army base town in Jersey (the army base meaning we had people from all over creation because the army moved their family around to wherever their job was).
Yeah, the word "privilege" is a HUGE point of contention here. I understand - my life has not been easy - but really, it's semantics. If I can understand that privilege or lack thereof is intersectional, I'm sure others can, too. So like, I have white privilege, but I don't have class privilege because I'm wicked poor; etc. Probably nobody except some guy who is literally a cis white rich Christian straight good-looking thin able-bodied neurotypical man, has all of the facets of privilege. And how much of the population is that? Not much. We all have a different bag of privileges and disadvantages, and it's really our responsibility to face them in order to erase them; it's our job to face the privileges we HAVE because we're the ones in the position of power in that way to be able to dismantle it. So like, it's important for me to call out white privilege; it's important for a cisgender person to call out cis privilege.
We have a similar situation here in the States about Affirmative Action, which are those kinds of laws that mandate businesses must have a certain number of whatever group in order to prevent discrimination; but really, the reality is the starting line is not the same. Like, it's not a privilege for a disabled person to be able to park nearer to the door, it's leveling the playing field a bit. It's like this:
The short kid isn't being given an advantage by having two boxes to stand on. :)
The nice-to-their-face racist happens here, too. That's my dad, actually. He'll be nice to everyone's face, but get a couple of drinks in him and slurs start coming out of his mouth and all sorts of bullshit. My sister and I would argue with him about it growing up, but he's never changed. He's not some sheltered person from a backwater who "just doesn't know people," he's from Brooklyn, his best friend when I was a kid was black, his sister-in-law is Korean, his kid is my queer ass (homophobic slurs come out of him, too), and his own dad escaped the damn Nazis in the 30s. You'd THINK that would have instilled in him some anti-bigotry, but it didn't. That's the other assumption people seem to have - that all it takes to overcome prejudice is exposure or education - but that's not always the case, or my dad wouldn't be like he is. We never stopped arguing with him - he just doesn't care.
We're writing many articles, here. LOL
Nice post. ;D
Pom is how the Brits are referred to in Australia. Nobody know for certain how they arrived at it, though. Would Americans call us limeys? I know how we got that name!
I think honky might have come from American tv shows, to be honest.
Americans are really copping it at the moment. The irony is that those willing to travel are usually the open minded ones and every one I've met has been lovely. My daughter was visiting England last year and she was mortified by how rude the Brits were towards American tourists. It wasn't always that way, so it shows what unsettled times we're in. Maybe it's a response to Brits being the bad guys after the fizzling out of the British Empire. Now America is becoming the bad guy we can divert the world's attention towards them. So much easier to blame the whole nation, isn't it?
That's interesting with the re-use of "queer". Does it have a new meaning to it? Growing up in England, "queer" referred to homosexuals, but lesbian and gay already cover that in the initials of the movement.
I'm curious, have you ever come across someone saying that disabled parking is a privilege? It seems odd to think of it that way and I'm pretty sure most don't. People mostly express disgust at none disabled using the spaces, but then I guess some people's definition of disabled vary. Sometimes disability isn't always apparent. It's a good example, however, and brings to mind the elastic line drawn between equity and privilege. At what point is someone abusing equity in order to make it a privilege? Those are the people who get others riled up.
I love what you say about facing your privileges. Without acknowledging the benefits of where and how we live, we're really just whining about everything. Nearly everyone has times in their lives where they see what others have and envy that. When I'm frying about paying the next bills or having to replace broken items, it helps to remind myself that some don't have the privilege of being able to worry about replacing a washing machine or fridge. They still manage to survive, though. Counting our blessings is a very good idea.
Isn't family funny. You can't choose them, though. I sometimes wonder if us offspring are fate throwing lessons into the workings for the parents. Apparently, my father said, before I was born, that if he ever had a red haired child he'd disown it! Then I came along. I've never heard him say anything against redheads, but I know his younger brother used to rib him about me, saying I was the milkman's despite me obviously having my father's traits. His brother's third child was a redhead too! This uncle was also rather racist and his redhead daughter now has a black partner. It made me roll when I first found out, because he adores her, so he'd never reject her over it.
Exposure and education probably works to a point, but often it can take a few generations. Even then there will still be those who it don't necessarily get it. Weird example, but cannibalism wasn't uncommon at one point, but even the last cultures to move away from it would be appalled by it now. However, there is still that odd one that crops up in what I guess we'd call a perversion. It's also not beyond being considered in crisis situations, when hunger overrides disgust.
I don't think you come across as lecturing. I love that you're making me think. Although I really should get some cleaning done instead of writing essays! Lol.
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Limeys is rather old timey and nobody says it anymore, but everyone would know what it meant. ;) Nowadays we'd just say Brits. Though if the UK breaks up because of Brexit, that will probably change, too - speaking of evolving language! LOL There's a song called Honky Talk Blues, so maybe that's where that came from, too. LOL
Yeah, America has been the colonial bad guy since probably WWII, when Europe had to rebuild and America started playing World Police and tinkering in other countries' business. Well, we were involving ourselves in other countries' business before that (cough Philippines cough), but we were really just doing what a lot of other European countries were doing, basically FOMO catch up scrambling trying to be like Big Daddy UK; it wasn't until the empire started breaking up and Europe was a major warzone that we really took over as The One With All The Resources And Nobody To Stop Us. It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans are shocked, shocked I say about the whole Russia scandal, while I'm like - do you know what the US has been doing since the cold war? Especially in Latin America? READ A HISTORY BOOK. A real one, not a rah-rah 'Murica one.
Queer still means gays, but it also applies to the whole spectrum - gay, trans, nonbinary, bi, etc. A lot of us that fit more than one letter in the alphabet soup acronym like it because it's more like "I'm in the gender/orientation rainbow" generally without having to run through a list of "I'm gay, ace, and trans."
Yeah, I've seen people actually say that accessible parking was a privilege, usually as they park there without being disabled and ranting about it to justify themselves. But as you say, more often I see people getting attacked because people think they are doing that, when really they ARE disabled, they just don't fit that mental image of being in a wheelchair, or even being paralyzed in a wheelchair. Like I've seen memes making fun of people in wheelchairs as faking it because the person in the chair stood up to reach something on a high shelf at the store. Like, they think the only reason to be in a wheelchair is if you're paralyzed and unable to stand at all. Um. People have all sorts of reasons to be in wheelchairs. It means you can't walk all over creation under your own steam just then, not that you absolutely can't move your legs. Like some days a friend of mine with CP needs a chair, and some days she needs a crutch, and on really rare occasions (but only really for short, indoor distances) she can manage without if it's a good, low pain day. She's not faking it, that's just how CP works. That's how a lot of things work. I just wish people wouldn't jump to conclusions!