On a serious note, this made me think, how can we be expected to "overcome" racism when we constantly have to be watchful to not use such a common word such as "black" for fear that we will be accused of racism and be called offensive, regardless of context? How are we to stop worrying about racism when we keep talking about it? If we constantly have to be watchful of our language to avoid offending someone how can we ever get past our past? Especially the past that I was not a part of.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Black Holes are Racist
I know, it is hard to believe but someone has managed to play the race card and think that black holes are racist. So in Phillips Hall (the physics building at UNC) there is a bathroom (Shocking! I know.) and on one of the walls someone scribbled some graffiti (not too surprising). While the original statement has since been lost due to scribblings and crossings out, it had to do with throwing into a black hole (right now I think it says something about sheep and how they have glory...yeah, um...yeah I won't elaborate). Well it turns out that someone saw the word "black" scribbled on the wall of a bathroom and considered that to be disrespectful and racist so they crossed it out (or they blacked it out;) so as to remove the "offensive" word. So apparently they thought that it was racist to have the word "black" scrawled on the wall of a bathroom even though it was only a reference to "black holes".
On a serious note, this made me think, how can we be expected to "overcome" racism when we constantly have to be watchful to not use such a common word such as "black" for fear that we will be accused of racism and be called offensive, regardless of context? How are we to stop worrying about racism when we keep talking about it? If we constantly have to be watchful of our language to avoid offending someone how can we ever get past our past? Especially the past that I was not a part of.
On a serious note, this made me think, how can we be expected to "overcome" racism when we constantly have to be watchful to not use such a common word such as "black" for fear that we will be accused of racism and be called offensive, regardless of context? How are we to stop worrying about racism when we keep talking about it? If we constantly have to be watchful of our language to avoid offending someone how can we ever get past our past? Especially the past that I was not a part of.
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One of the best parts of this election cycle was that our country elected its first black president and race turned out to be a non-issue. Of course there is still racism and the fear of being called racist, but if nothing else, this election showed us that as a nation, race isn't nearly as big a deal as it used to be. And as race becomes less of an issue, fear of being called racist will decline as well, although probably with about a 10-20 year phase lag.
ReplyDeleteNick, I completely agree with you.
ReplyDeleteThat means we can get on with our lives and treat people like people and not sensitive political issues.
ReplyDelete