UO Thursday

chloe97 · November 2018

@sleepy33 Well her screen name included Caremel and her avatar looks to be an African-American woman, so I would likely say African-American?

I am not trying to call people out- I just think that as long as we are talking about racism-it deserved to be mentioned. People from other walks of life have different ways of speaking and telling their stories. And people from less advantaged backgrounds may have what a middle-class white woman see as a "crazy life", but is really just a product of centuries of racial impression combined with cultural and institutional racism and yes- much higher rates of mental illness (not saying that she was mentally ill, just saying that POC have greater risk factors mental illness). When I was reading her story, I tried to see it from that lens.

Honestly, I wish she would have felt more comfortable and stuck around because I could have learned a lot about living in rural Texas as a POC if she chimed in from time to time.

mrsclark731 · November 2018

My UO—I don’t think telling your children you ate their Halloween candy is funny. I know Jimmy Kimmel does a big segment every year ... but I think it’s mean and sad. I cringe and have second hand embarrassment. I can’t watch it.

peachy13 · November 2018

@k2k2tog haha soo many people love them and I just don't know why. My SIL loves them but knows it's just trash, but then I have a coworker who will fiercely defend them and idolizes everything they do.

missy052819 · November 2018

chloe97 said:

@sleepy33 Well her screen name included Caremel and her avatar looks to be an African-American woman, so I would likely say African-American?

I am not trying to call people out- I just think that as long as we are talking about racism-it deserved to be mentioned. People from other walks of life have different ways of speaking and telling their stories. And people from less advantaged backgrounds may have what a middle-class white woman see as a "crazy life", but is really just a product of centuries of racial impression combined with cultural and institutional racism and yes- much higher rates of mental illness (not saying that she was mentally ill, just saying that POC have greater risk factors mental illness). When I was reading her story, I tried to see it from that lens.

Honestly, I wish she would have felt more comfortable and stuck around because I could have learned a lot about living in rural Texas as a POC if she chimed in from time to time.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/5020794/uploads/editor/bq/mmanixhm4xzg.jpg

fatmonica · November 2018

I thought caramel... said she was Haitian, but I could be remembering wrong?

sleepy33 · November 2018

I honestly didn't remember she had any avatar at all...unobservant I am.

missy052819 · November 2018

@sleepy33 she could of added an avatar later on?

troystory17 · November 2018

@mrsclark731 I told my kids I was going to take their Halloween candy away this morning when they were refusing to brush their teeth, and my 2 yo responded with nooo not my candy, and I felt so bad thinking about how hard they worked for that candy haha

Im sure I have a whole lot of uo's just none I can ever think of lol

expandcontract · November 2018

I actually like the Kardashians. I don't understand why people hate them so much. Fine, they don't really have any REAL talent but their talent is that they're famous and can profit off of it. I think they're actually pretty smart and caring compared to some of the other reality shows I've seen. And plus, I just like watching rich people and they're like the only ones who don't have a cat fight everyday.

SpaceBurger · November 2018

Maybe this is a UO, but you don't think 5+ paragraphs of a TMI story isn't material to be poked fun at?

mariposa_767s · November 2018

Kardashians are dumb. I don't think that's a UO (at least I hope)

That girl was from Haiti. I remember her being from around that area. However, I didn't consider her heritage to contribute to her craziness. I figured it was just "her". It actually kind of bothers me that one would assume someone treated her differently simply because they thought she was a POC instead of just because she said crazy sh*t.

Not funny to make fun of kids for them getting upset that you took their candy. They look forward to that for months and it's unfair to pretend to take it from them. It makes my heart hurt.

eatinwatermelonseeds · November 2018

UO. It makes me super uncomfortable when people thank me for my military service. I appreciate their gratitude, but I guess I just don't feel like I did anything deserving of it? And then I never know how to answer that, because "you're welcome" feels awkward. I have tried "thank YOU for your appreciation" but that feels weird too 😂

DuchessOfCambridge · November 2018

@chloe97 thank you for mentioning that. I do see where you're coming from. I reacted negatively towards her before I knew she was Haitian and that mostly stems from this being the internet, me not trusting people, and catfishes being a real thing. This is probably bad, but I tend to assume people are white unless they say otherwise because I'm so used to being around white people and them being the majority (I am not white). So in this case - I assumed she was white, and I also didn't believe her and wondered even if it was true why she was sharing all that information with us. You're right, she was from a different background and likely didn't understand all the same social nuances those of us who grew up in America or have been here since childhood do.

@cwell2016

I'm also a WOC and only in the past two years have really started having uncomfortable conversations! But like, if I never share, people will never know. It's always so hard to have the convo directly with someone because it makes them defensive, which I get. I still haven't figured out how to ask my friend to stop with the black skinned emojis.

@peachy13 @k2k2tog explained beautifully, and that article is worth a read. As I said before, intent is everything and many people certainly do not intend racism with specific gifs but enough do that it hurts the POC community. Different races are allowed to have feelings about the way they are portrayed.

@megsb615 that's a good point but another thing to think about is that being white in America is seen as the best and like winning the lottery. Most white girls I know take great pride in the "basic white girl" persona or "dancing like a white girl". When you're at the top of the chain and the majority, it's not really an insult. I know this totally seems like a double standard of sorts but there certainly is a chain. I watched a really powerful video of a college class where the professor asked how many people thought Blacks were treated poorly in America. Not too many raised their hands. Then she asked how many would switch places with a Black person. Nothing. Not even other POC. Because everyone knows EXACTLY how Blacks are treated. I hope this kind of explained why it's seen as okay for POC to use those gifs of white people but not the other way around? I don't even know if anything I said made sense!

OMG this was so long, sorry guys!!!

Also @peachy13 the Kardashians are the worst and I don't understand why they are famous. I've seen three episodes I think and the two younger ones were idk, maybe 11? and dancing on stripper poles and I COULD NOT.

@mrsclark731 that makes me sad too

kvh22 · November 2018

@eatinwatermelonseeds I never thought about that. Sincerely, I appreciate everyone who serves, but I don't know what a normal response would be to that. DH has worked with many active and retired military and his father is an Air Force Veteran who did a full career (22 years) with multiple deployments during war time. We have USAA and DH "looks" military (that's probably stereotyping, sorry, but he gets comments about it a lot, especially when he used to live near the Naval Postgraduate School). People used to thank him when he had a military ID (Boston bars, where we went to college, don't accept out of state IDs under 25 to drink and various other reasons for using it) and just the other day when he used his USAA credit card someone thanked him. It literally renders him speechless. I'm just like "oh, thanks, his dad served." It's not that hard. But in your case, I think you're probably minimizing what you did in your mind and you SHOULD be thanked.

expandcontract · November 2018

@eatinwatermelonseeds THANK YOU for your service! And yes, you totally deserve it.

eatinwatermelonseeds · November 2018

@expandcontract 😂😂 um... You're welcome? 😂

DuchessOfCambridge · November 2018

eatinwatermelonseeds said:

@expandcontract 😂😂 um... You're welcome? 😂

this made me giggle a lot

sleepy33 · November 2018

@eatinwatermelonseeds

brie_and_almonds · November 2018

So much going on in this thread...

My UOs: The Christmas season should not even be allowed to think about starting until December 2 (DD1's birthday is December 1).

Caremel's story was bananas, because it was long and rambling and oversharing, and I thought she was an over-the-top catfish... still not convinced she wasn't.

I don't even know how to weigh in on the POC gif issue...

Also, from here on out I will be quietly judging you all knowing y'all are all pronouncing gif wrong.

SpaceBurger · November 2018

Wouldn't it be racist to NOT make fun of someone for posting a huge TMI intro? I mean, we should poke fun at all people equally.

DuchessOfCambridge · November 2018

brie_and_almonds said:

So much going on in this thread...

My UOs: The Christmas season should not even be allowed to think about starting until December 2 (DD1's birthday is December 1).

Caremel's story was bananas, because it was long and rambling and oversharing, and I thought she was an over-the-top catfish... still not convinced she wasn't.

I don't even know how to weigh in on the POC gif issue...

Also, from here on out I will be quietly judging you all knowing y'all are all pronouncing gif wrong.

Right there with you

jkduer · November 2018

My first UO is that I start celebrating the Christmas season when Hallmark does, October 26 this year. My second UO is that I hate Thanksgiving. I try to get it over with early so I can nap and then do some midnight shopping.

RoseShadow873 · November 2018

I don't really care how people pronounce GIF. Really I think the best way would be to pronounce every letter like G-I-F. But I think there is a good argument for the hard G, and also the soft G sounds annoying because it's like JIF peanut butter, which I always thought had an annoying name.

mariposa_767s · November 2018

@DuchessOfCambridge i find it interesting that you often assume most people are white. I've often wondered if that was the common assumption or if people like to assume people are like them. OR if POC tend not to assume and white people assume. This is something where, as a white person, I don't know the answer and it seems weird to come out and ask people. The POC in my family say that sometimes it's easy to tell, but this has always been an interesting topic for me. This might be rambly...but I think these things are interesting and important to discuss and understand.

cwell2016 · November 2018

@DuchessOfCambridge That is such a difficult conversation, I struggle with it too.

DuchessOfCambridge · November 2018

@mariposa_767s I just assume because it's very rare for there to be more people like me than for there to be white people. Not saying my assuming isn't wrong, I'm just used to being the only POC amongst white people. It happens surprisingly often for me being in a big city! That being said, I'm not surprised when people are not white. I think this is weird of me. I'm weird. It 100% stems from me being used to being the only minority.

megsb615 · November 2018

@DuchessOfCambridge I definitely see where you are coming from, but being in the south especially, poverty and crime seem to be more of an issue than other places, and believe me, it doesn’t always have to do with color. I know that’s not what you’re saying, but just being white does not necessarily equal “winning the lottery”. There are plenty of white people that are in no way privledged at all. My dad came from “humble” beginnings (read: poor). His brother and him literally slept on a glorified porch and would get wet when it rained. We’re from a very small/one street light kind of town where most people don’t graduate high school, much less go to college. He worked his ass off through high school, got a scholarship to West Point, and has done well for himself. I say this to say, he came from nothing just like a lot of people (of every color) in my hometown and decided he wanted a change. I hope this isn’t coming off as argumentative. I just wanted to throw out a different perspective, and like you said in your post, I’m not even sure if any of this makes sense. 🤷🏼‍♀️

ETA: words are hard.

chloe97 · November 2018

SpaceBurger said:

Wouldn't it be racist to NOT make fun of someone for posting a huge TMI intro? I mean, we should poke fun at all people equally.

See that is exactly the thing. To me when a group of middle-class white ladies gang up on another middle-class white lady- it looks and feels a lot differently than a group of ladies ganging up on a Haitian woman who obviously comes from a very different background than us. As @DuchessOfCambridge notes white women are at the top of the pecking order and it felt "icky" to me.

To be honest Caremel's posts read a lot like the Facebook posts of a doula we worked with during the birth of DD who is from Jamaica. Our doula is utterly fantastic at what she does and loving and wonderful, but if I didn't know her personally, I might be apt to think she was BSC. She posts some outlandish freaking stories about her life. But her culture is very different from ours. Online presence is affected by cultural norms as much as anything is. And that is my entire point. It's very likely that if we were to post on a pregnancy board with a lot Haitians, we would be called out as crazy too. But what could she have added to this community that would have broadened our horizons and contributed to conversations we are having about things such as racial disparities in maternal care or even just racism in general? I love this board because we are having so many great conversations about these things and would love to hear other types of perspectives!

sleepy33 · November 2018

@megsb615 I see what you're saying, but the poorest white person still has the basic advantage of being white and not having to overcome institutional racism, which manifests itself in millions of tiny and huge ways in this country.

DuchessOfCambridge · November 2018

@megsb615 I so understand that and I agree. I know I have been more privileged in some ways than many who are white and poor. My parents were able to find steady jobs when they immigrated here and had the opportunity to save up money to move from a tiny city apartment to the middle class suburb I grew up in. Because of that I was able to go to a very good public school and get into and attend a good private university. We weren't wealthy and worried about money all the time, but we were not what I would consider poor, rather lower middle class. Poverty knows no race. It's hard to explain...I once saw something that said "no one is arguing you haven't had a difficult life if you're white, it's just that you haven't had to deal with one more thing on top of it". It's similar to the kind of privilege that a poor white man can have over a wealthy white woman - he can generally walk around at night without fearing for his life or worrying about being sexually assaulted. That's kind of an extreme example but white privilege does not necessarily mean wealth and prosperity. Here's an article that explains it much better than I can, and I wonder if it makes the "whites can't use POC gifs but POC can use white gifs" more understandable. By the way - I'm not saying you absolutely shouldn't use POC gifs. The majority of people I come across do not intend them in a racist manner, but sometimes they are and it's not even thought about. I use gifs of POC who are not my race but I think twice before doing so and making sure what I'm trying to say can't be better represented differently.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-crosleycorcoran/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-person_b_5269255.html

I hope this came off respectful! I don't mean to be anything but that.

DuchessOfCambridge · November 2018

K so now I see @sleepy33 said what I wanted to say in way fewer words

mariposa_767s · November 2018

@DuchessOfCambridge you're not weird. I understand your POV. Your explanation of privilege also doesn't come across as disrespectful. I explain it in a similar way. I think it's hard for a white person to understand without feeling it or being able to identify with how it feels.

I'm glad people in our country are finally having these conversations.

thebobloblaw · November 2018

sleepy33 said:

@megsb615 I see what you're saying, but the poorest white person still has the basic advantage of being white and not having to overcome institutional racism, which manifests itself in millions of tiny and huge ways in this country.

I just made it through this thread. I think this statement is exactly what a lot of people fail to remember or understand.

That being said, maybe my UO is that I hate the term “woke”. Not what the term means just the word itself... I honestly dont know why it bothers me but it does.

sleepy33 · November 2018

DuchessOfCambridge said:

K so now I see @sleepy33 said what I wanted to say in way fewer words

😂

SpaceBurger · November 2018

@chloe97 I don't know, how do you know we're not all Haitian? Do you know I'm not? Kind of a dumb argument, but I can see you thinking it was mean just for mean sake, but definitely not racist.

megsb615 · November 2018

@sleepy33 @DuchessOfCambridge and whoever else.. It does make sense, and I get it. I’ll have to read the article later since we’re about to go to dinner. I hope my posts haven’t made me sound insensitive or ignorant. 😬

DuchessOfCambridge · November 2018

megsb615 said:

@sleepy33 @DuchessOfCambridge and whoever else.. It does make sense, and I get it. I’ll have to read the article later since we’re about to go to dinner. I hope my posts have made me sound insensitive or ignorant. 😬

100% not insensitive or ignorant. You made valid points.

eatinwatermelonseeds · November 2018

My goal is to respect everyone, of every color. I fear however, as far as gifs go, (and on the internet especially) that I can't please everybody all the time. Like, if I only use white gifs, am I being noninclusive? I don't think I use a lot of gifs with POC and when I do, it's never usually stereotypical. I can never know what it's like to be a POC and I will never pretend to know. I have experienced racism (before I ever really understood what it was, which I realize is a luxury to not have known), and it was a shitty feeling. I've spoken with close friends and I can't imagine having the experiences they've had. I will always do my best always to respect EVERYONE, especially people I know (who ultimately I care about), and do my best to alter my habits that may offend others I meet (which is typically unintentional). I appreciate that we can discuss this like adults, open mindedly.

Edited because something came out wrong lol

expandcontract · November 2018

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