come chat, vent about crackers, or share something positive! No crackers allowed!!

  • SUPAVILLAIN
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    6 months ago

    My kingdom for crackers to stop playing like joking about feds in your house is funny. For some crackers, it’s a saturday night live routine; for us, that shit is a hashtagging of us, our lovers, our families, and maybe even our cats and dogs if the peckerwood pig on the other end of the magnum’s feeling peckish. God fucking damn.

  • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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    6 months ago

    white (passing) liberals who think euphemistic racism isn’t racism are fucking exhausting. we were driving my wife’s friend home and were talking about a neighborhood in my city and how rents were going up. so I said, well, yeah, it’s gentrifying. her friend started saying not really and my wife agreed, saying something about “urban youth” - apparently she meant the perceptions of bougie white people and was using the phrase tongue in cheek but it didn’t land that way to me and her friend took it as an invitation to increase the level of racism. after a bit, I pretended to have spaced out for a bit and asked them to clarify who they were talking about - you know, inviting them to drop the euphemisms and walk it back a bit - but her friend just immediately jumped in with “problem people” so I just checked out for the rest of the drive, until I could properly chide my wife for the racist bullshit.

    when I did, she gave the above clarification but dove straight into the lib racism of paternalistic stereotypes (it’s not their fault, they’re just traumatized so they do drugs and abuse their kids - removed, all parents abuse their kids! you’re trans, you know that!) so I called her out about that too. told her to eat the racist brainworms.

    anyway, that’s it. just venting. she wants me to be friends with her friend but I just don’t think we’re going to connect - I’m going to start a fight over bullshit like this sooner rather than later. I can’t keep my mouth shut unless I’m already exhausted.

      • Well, because I don’t feel much attachment to my nation of origin, the Philippines, with its culture, and language,

        I guess that’s in part due to the fact I was raised as a child of some skilled expats who worked in Dubai, in a more or less globalized environment…

        • SUPAVILLAIN
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          6 months ago

          I used to, when I was a lot younger. It took a close homie of mine chipping away at the neurotic almost-phobia that my mother gave me of my own culture, and then a run-in with the cops a few years after the homie that absolutely informed me as to what I am when the pig’s radioing home, for me to really start busting those walls down and feeling out who I am and what my place is.

            • SUPAVILLAIN
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              6 months ago

              Wish I knew. The trail for my genealogy disappears after like 1890, but I was given to understand that my family escaped slavery before the Proclamation was written. I can only really call myself Black, rather than have a direct nation to trace back to. (Cause motherfuck me if you thought I was gonna claim Amerika!)

        • Neptium
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          6 months ago

          I have a very similar background to you.

          I don’t have solutions per se but I realised later on that my lack of interest in my own origin and culture stems from mainly personal trauma and scarce engagement with people from my country.

          Like you, since being taught abroad, it meant that there was no singular nation or country to identify with and I assume, as typical for international kids in the Arabian Peninsula, you’d grow up either in a “international” private school and your high school would end in either IAL or IB.

          This means a severe disconnection and ignorance of your own history and culture. You’d be taught a Eurocentric and often “globalized” (neoliberal) image of both yourself and society at large. I myself was bombarded with notions of “global citizenship” (which was an actual subject you could study).

          A step towards appreciating and recognising my own identity was reading the history of my own country. Understanding what my ancestors been through, understanding the dynamics in which have shaped people before me, and understanding how it affected my self-perception and how I ended up where I am (in this case, West Asia).

          It is not easy. But fortunately for both you and I, we have our work cut out short by being from countries colonized by Anglophones. There is an extensive corpus of books written in English that you are able to engage with dealing with your own culture and country.

          I myself struggle to learn a language - and I envy those who can pick up multiple relatively easily - so I say this as no easy step, but learning your native tongue and it’s nuances and specifities will undoubtedly boost your own “cultural self-confidence” but also allow you to engage with the masses of people where you are from.

          I’ll have to say though that I was able to return to my home country for a few years, and that also helped slowly chipped the alienation I had felt prior.

        • GreenWater [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          6 months ago

          I have never heard of an apple before. Is this an American nickname? I do sometimes feel myself growing distant from Taiwan as I continue to live in Latin America and integrate more to the culture. There are times when I find myself thinking in Spanish before Chinese and it is a little concerning sometimes.

          Are you American? Or do you still live in Dubai? I have heard America can be hard for people from other cultures because you are forced to assimilate.

          • First of all, I’m not American… second, I don’t live in Dubai anymore (I stayed there until I was 14 years old) , just around North America…

            Third, I’ve been mostly living in an international setting, so I don’t live near, or interact much with white people, let alone Gulf Arabs in UAE…

            Fourth, what is an Apple?..

            I use the term banana and coconut, to refer to East-Asians (Eg. Chinese) and South-Asians (Eg. Indians), whose main commonality is that they’ve internalized heavily a bit of western-thinking, if not culture…

            • GreenWater [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              6 months ago

              My mistake. I assumed you were American because I have heard similar things from Asians who immigrated there.

              I misread and thought you said apple. Maybe I am more tired than I think. These names are unfamiliar to me but I guess I feel like a banana sometimes. I am fortunate that there is a Chinese population everywhere but it is not quite the same with most I meet coming from Hong Kong or Shanghai.

    • Othello [comrade/them, love/loves]@hexbear.netOPM
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      6 months ago

      i was raised in the suburbs for half my childhood (my parents… its a whole thing, they were scammers) so now i have a perfectly neutraul white sounding accent. i can and do code switch but its hard when im feeling burnout.

    • silent_water [she/her]@hexbear.netM
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      6 months ago

      I feel that way whenever I’m with people of my ethnicity but instantly feel the opposite whenever I spend too much time around white people. tbh I really only feel at home around leftists but even then their culinary choices are… concerning… who the fuck eats unspiced boiled peas with literally nothing else in the bowl??

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      the cancellation is implicit. Much like “Jumbo shrimp” or “American freedom”

      also (unrelated) every POC should learn about the different provinces of China and India. And African countries too if you don’t know anything about those (but I assume some people know at least a little since they’re official countries, which puts them on people’s radar)

  • SexUnderSocialism [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    I’ve had this interesting journey of going through visible changes that changed people’s perception of my ethnicity, and it’s happened more than once. I wonder if anyone else had had something similar.

    I’m of mixed Asian and African ancestry, and up until I was 5 years old or so, I looked distinctively Asian. People would call me a Chinese kid. As I got older my facial features changed, and my skin color became darker. I then became known as the local black kid among a sea of cracker. When I transitioned in my 20s and went on estrogen there were major visual changes again. My skin color also became lighter due to the skin thinning on estrogen. This made me visibly go from looking like a black dude to a Latina woman. Nowadays I often get people asking me if I’m from Brazil or Argentina or something.

  • Comp4 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    Melina got banned huh. Anyways. Getting fucking cold. Christmas weather was pretty mild but now its getting deep below zero again snom

  • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    6 months ago

    I don’t know if I should post in this thread, because I’m not sure if I’m a POC. In Brazil, I’m white (says so on my ID card), but I’m right in the middle of the US foreign policy chart. When I was in New Zealand, lots of people thought I was Mexican (presumably because I had a goatee at the time, lol). Lots of “white” Brazilians who think of themselves as white are surprised when they’re suddenly Latino/a when abroad.

    I always find it funny that whiteness is such a fucking made up concept.

    • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      6 months ago

      My maternal grandfather was black/indigenous but I pass as white so I usually just kind of lurk in discussions like these so I don’t drown out other voices. I’ll never think of myself as white but it’s obvious why people see me as white.

    • In Brazil, I’m white (says so on my ID card),

      What, did they declare you 50% or more European, and thus white

      Or is your European ancestry is just the most dominant DNA, but it doesn’t surpass 50%…

      Either way, you can consider yourself mestizo or something…

      • joaomarrom [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        6 months ago

        Most of my ancestry on my father’s side is anti-italian-action, but on my mother’s side it’s all northeastern, and one very sus native Brazilian woman + Portuguese man couple in the 1800s, which carries quite a few nasty implications. If you used “50% or more European” as a criterion for whiteness in Brazil, I’m sure only about 1-2% of the population would be white, lol

        Essentially, the “race” part of our IDs is just a good ol’ brown paper bag test.