Friday, April 13, 2007
Spurious Assertions
Paraphrasing heaps here, but I liked this comment on one of the blogs I was reading today.
"When privilege becomes normalised, it becomes a right, at least in the eyes of those who hold that privilege. And when people challenge that privilege, it is seen as an attack on that person's rights. Which is when people get all iffy and hysterical and call out reverse-racism/sexism/classim/ableism etc."
No such thing as bloody reverse racism/sexism/classim/ableism. Period. People who are dispproportionately disadvantaged by the system do not have any responsibility to sooth and nurture you so you, you in the position of power, won't get your feelings hurt. Bullshit is bullshit, and bullshit will be called as and when it happens.
That being said, I appreciate that a lot of this discourse comes from a very American context, where the White/Black dichotomy is at its starkest. But it can very definitely be applied in an Australian context, where Aboriginal issues are pretty much swept under the carpet and indigenous people are continually marginalised and typecast as 'lazy bums who sniff glue and rape 13 year old girls', so they have to be locked up in prison where they, in many cases, suffer under police brutality.
It applies to the Singaporean context as well. We Chinese are to Singapore what the Whites are to America. No, we didn't have historical systematic lynching of minorities, (God forbid), but comparable in the sense that we occupy nearly all the positions of power. I for one am bloody sick of the 'smelly Indian jokes'. The only smelly ones are the rich fat towkay neos re-incarnated as merc driving Nassim road dickheads who treat their Indonesian maids like shit.
Not directly related, since I'm on a stream of consciousness rant, but anyway : my brother is a misogynist. When I told him that women only earn 80% of what men in comparable positions earned, he said, "huh? that's very good already what."
"When privilege becomes normalised, it becomes a right, at least in the eyes of those who hold that privilege. And when people challenge that privilege, it is seen as an attack on that person's rights. Which is when people get all iffy and hysterical and call out reverse-racism/sexism/classim/ableism etc."
No such thing as bloody reverse racism/sexism/classim/ableism. Period. People who are dispproportionately disadvantaged by the system do not have any responsibility to sooth and nurture you so you, you in the position of power, won't get your feelings hurt. Bullshit is bullshit, and bullshit will be called as and when it happens.
That being said, I appreciate that a lot of this discourse comes from a very American context, where the White/Black dichotomy is at its starkest. But it can very definitely be applied in an Australian context, where Aboriginal issues are pretty much swept under the carpet and indigenous people are continually marginalised and typecast as 'lazy bums who sniff glue and rape 13 year old girls', so they have to be locked up in prison where they, in many cases, suffer under police brutality.
It applies to the Singaporean context as well. We Chinese are to Singapore what the Whites are to America. No, we didn't have historical systematic lynching of minorities, (God forbid), but comparable in the sense that we occupy nearly all the positions of power. I for one am bloody sick of the 'smelly Indian jokes'. The only smelly ones are the rich fat towkay neos re-incarnated as merc driving Nassim road dickheads who treat their Indonesian maids like shit.
Not directly related, since I'm on a stream of consciousness rant, but anyway : my brother is a misogynist. When I told him that women only earn 80% of what men in comparable positions earned, he said, "huh? that's very good already what."
# posted by me lah @ 3:22 pm 
