mentha

blog against racism

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 18:50:26 GMT

Given recent events, I was hesitant to post on the subject. As it turns out, I do have something to say.

Several years ago, I was out on a business lunch with our customer. One of the people there was this fantastic lady, G. G. was the only black person and one of very few women in management in her division of this particular extremely competetive business (you've all heard of this company). She is an amazing and inspirational woman who takes absolutely no crap whatsoever.

During the course of the lunch, she told a story about how she'd gone to lunch with her family, including her four-year-old daughter, over the weekend. Her daughter was apparently a bit restless (though knowing G. I have every confidence the child's behavior was well within acceptable parameters). However, they'd been seated near some cave-dwelling neanderthals who turned around at one point and asked them to shut the little nigger up.

I was appalled that anyone could use that word on a child. Shocked, even. I'd seen a lot of quiet racism, and heard a lot of white people saying horrible things behind the backs of people of color, but I had never imagined someone would casually do something like that in public. I said as much - the story had really opened my eyes.

G.'s response was that all black children have to get their cherry popped sometime.

I will never have to try to somehow explain to my daughter why her skin color makes her practically an animal in some people's eyes. I will never have to tell her that some people will assume she has no money, or that she's greedy, or that she likes to fight, or any of the other stupid, negative assumptions people make about other races and cultures.

My daughter is five, and she does not know the meaning of the word nigger. She has never (to my knowledge) even heard it. I will tell her, but I will wait until she can try to begin to understand.

This is my privilege as a white mother.

A quick rec ~

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 06:44:20 GMT

I know everything's exploded lately. I haven't been reading anything - I've got several fics bookmarked to come back to later on. But this one you don't want to miss.

Putting Out Fires (With Gasoline) by Fleshdress is an HP AU in a cyber-punk setting with Sirius/Snape, James/Lily, and Lucius/Regulus as the main pairings. There's tons of action and porn - really good porn of all sorts of flavors - and it's an extremely enjoyable read.

Fandom has been a Not Fun place lately, and this is one of those fics that reminded me of everything I enjoyed about fandom to begin with.

You need to sign an age statement and join the community to read it (it doesn't seem to have been crossposted to GJ or IJ yet), but it's definitely worth it.

Can't fandom just hire movers?

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 01:13:22 GMT

It's strange to see everything getting locked down, deleted, moved or canceled.

Anyway, there's no point in me making a long post about my feelings about LJ/6A. I agree completely with amanuensis1's post - she's already said everything and said it well.

I've been slowly picking away at backing up my fics to my other journals. I will keep my LJ, but its use will be limited to a very few things that I can't imagine moving like Hogwarts Elite (it just wouldn't make sense). Once all of my fic has been backed up, I will probably remove it from LJ entirely.

For right now, IJ is my preferred journal but I will mirror most everything to LJ, GJ and JF.

I am:

mentha at InsaneJournal (Please don't friend 'greenspine' there!)
greenspine at GreatestJournal
mentha at JournalFen

New journal

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 19:44:44 GMT

I now have a home everywhere on the Internet. :D