Re: sorry
If you don't meet the criteria for a job - so long as those criteria aren't racial, I mean - and you don't get that job, then no, you can't pull the race card. There are loads of times when people do misplay their hands here. I won't deny that. People do it with gender as well. Men and women both. Women sometimes call sexual harassment in the workplace without proof, and men often use their gender to deliberately get a leg up.
I'll tell you something though. One of the meanings of white privilege is essentially that the race card can be played for you when it's convenient, either because you push the issue or because the system does it for you. Have a chew on that. Don't be reactive. Think.
But the number of times that people actually misplay their hand on purpose regarding race, gender, whatever else, is probably far lower than some would have you believe. For every experience you hear about, there are probably thousands of cases where nothing bad happens. Also, let's remember that those in power tend to sensationalize the mistakes of those without it. Black woman lies about her address so her child can go to a specific school, she gets five years in prison. Media goes into a feeding frenzy. White supremacists have a fucking field day. White woman pays 15000 dollars to influence her child's SAT scores, she gets six months in jail. Nobody cares. Have a chew on that. Don't be reactive. Think.
Do you know why there's more LGBT representation in TV these days? It's because it has been staggeringly omitted till not too long ago. Hell, did you know that until a couple of decades back, it was actually illegal in some places to portray homosexual relationships on TV? At the very, very least, it just wasn't done. The same is true for fiction in general, by the way. Homosexuality, bisexuality was an enormous scandal, and heaven help you if you lived in a certain part of the world and came out. This is a rebound effect. You don't have to feel the same way as these characters to realize that this is about acceptance. Give it some time and this will fade into normality. And also, do some freaking data analysis. Go through, say, twenty TV shows. Random ones, not cherry-picked ones that suit your agenda. List all the known couples in those twenty TV shows, and figure out how many of them are non-hetero. Go do that, and come back to me and tell me what you find. Because I bet you the numbers won't actually be as bad as you're suggesting. My best bet says that between 5-20% of those relationships will be non-heterosexual. And guess what? That's not vastly out of perspective. A little high, maybe, but not vastly inflated. Also, do you know why some TV shows are tackling these issues in a way that might be annoying to some? It's because, as I've said, they've gotten no coverage before. TV has spent decades being able to moralize about damn near everything else, and now it's decided to actually highlight that yes, it's okay to love someone who's the same gender as you, or to enjoy relationships with different genders, or whatever the case may be.
Seriously. People ought to stop yowling about representation in the media. This is an unmitigated good thing. Have a chew on that. Don't be reactive. Think.
Accman, you really delight in stretching arguments till they snap, don't you? The issue with branding that you brought up cannot and will not affect all brands, but you're trying to make it look that way. Ditto the TV stuff. They yank a couple of shows, suddenly it's going to affect everything, including audio games. There's an official rhetorical term for this, but it's been fifteen years since I took a philosophy class so I don't remember the Latin word for it. Suffice it to say, this isn't really an argument. It's an appeal to emotions, and it fails horribly. Focus on the facts. We could have an honest discussion about branding, but you aren't actually prepared to do that. As a white person, you are convinced that this whole race business has gone too far. And you know what? You -can think that, because you're white. I'm white, too. I could do the same as you. But unlike you, I choose to actually acknowledge that even if the status quo has been fine for me and for others like me for a long time, it's not fine for other people. I can also acknowledge that even if I think that some of this rebranding and TV business feels a bit much to me - and yeah, sure it does, because lots of stuff is changing and humans generally don't like change - it also isn't going to hurt anyone. At all. Ever. Full stop. So resisting it is pointless, and would just make me look like a terrific asshole. Personally, I'd rather be on the side of meaningful change, and if there's a chance that the rebranding of Aunt Jemima or the removal of TV shows about the police can help those who are being persecuted for the colour of their skin, I say go for it. Whatever silly little tweaks of unease I feel as a white person, who will feel no harm from this and will lose nothing, are utterly irrelevant. It is high time that the silly tweaks of reactive feeling felt by white people stop being the guiding force of meaningful actions against racism; it's why the problem still persists in the first place.
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