I want to get the entire "oversensitives" definition tattooed somewhere.

oh, this is so fuckin' great. sign me up for the oversensitives definition tattoo too. except for that i can't spell it...takes me like three tries...

i love you, nez

This is ATM man. Ok, who is the gavacho who actually writes this stuff for you ?
:)

that's a big tat, mis hermanas! mebbe if you made it all winding and viney like a garden on ya back, crawling all around and yon, you might fit it! thank you both muchly mil.

and heyjoe, my neighbor is a WHITEPROGRESSIVE doin his part for the xican@ cause, and being harvardy and willing to help on odd saturdays writes all the "smart" stuff on my blog and lets me, as a brown person claim it. its his way of atoning. ;)

Heheh....I like this chico; he kicks ass. :-)

Only thing, though, Nez: Down (up??) here in SmackDog Territory we tend to call these "WHITEPROGRESSIVE" folks "pwogwessives" (CounterPunch's Alex Cockburn gets credit for originating that term) due to their Elmer Fuddish-like tendency to get themselves tonguetied at the first sign of any real radical critique on their mealy-mouthed wussiness.

And John Halitosis....errrrrr, Aravosis...is a prima example of the prototypical WHITEPROG/Pwog. ("I am the kingmaker who protects gay/lesbian America from the Republithugs....but people of color who aren't pwog Democrats(Cynthia McKinney, John Conyers) really, really scare me because they don't play by my rules.")

I'll take one of them "oversensitives" tats myself...do they come in Black???

:-)

Anthony

Oh, Nez; as a woman of color, I have a whole lot of flesh to spare for such a crowning definition. ;)

I also love the colorblind definition; I'm imagining entire hordes of white progressives carrying scepters and wearing white-colored contact lenses...

Know that I, as a white Puerto Rican, take full faith and credit for the work above. It was my inspirational words (which lacked all meaning, but where very pretty, or so I am told) that let to this defining work of blogmastery (remember kids, never hyphenate compound words starting with blog, it eats to much bandwidth).

I now bid you adieu!

Nez, another amazing post. As a white person who has learned a lot overing the past few months from reading POC blogs (just like from reading feminist blogs), I can only say, by way of encouragement, that some of it does get through. It's too bad that so many WHITEPROGRESSIVES refuse to even consider the possibility that they might be missing something. What worries me is that they know something about their market, about the mass of WPG readers they rely on. I hope it's just stubborness on the part of "big bloggers" with big heads, not a well-founded sense that they would lose a lot of readers if they started "caving in" to "hysterical" minorities and shit ("oh, he's one of those").

I think blogs are really good for teaching white people about this kind of stuff. It can be hard to deal with certain things in conversations, but you can read blogs at your own pace, mull them over, come back to them, etc. Even in cyber-space, there's no way I could have dealt with a lot of this stuff when I was younger, like early or even mid twenties. It's not even so much accepting that I have a lot of completely unearned, and actually unjust, privilege--it's even more realizing that so much of what seems commonsensical and obvious to me is just a particular accidental perspective I have, with no special relationship to reality.

Anyways, all of this is just a long-winded way to offer encouragement and say keep up the good work. Oh, and I love that your posts are so intelligent and move along with such force and passion, but also have little details like "naked cybermeats between senators and young boys" thrown in, almost between the lines.

Ok, so I didn't come up with these words (we male muses have our limitations, we don't do music) but these white boys sure know ho to rock!

Artist : Green Day
Title : American Idiot
Album : American Idiot
Genre : Modern Rock

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mindfuck America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
Well that's enough to argue.

Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along in the age of paranoia.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
Well that's enough to argue.

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information nation of hysteria.
It's going out to idiot America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8h4o8O_99XI

I think I love the "colorblind" definition best! Very astute.

I am trying to figure out where this word "progressive" came from. I think I missed its genesis. It seems to exist in order to erase the possibility of being a white radical race traitor. ?

heraclitus, i love to hear this. i learn, too by reading feminist blogs and other PoC blogs. i pretty much get where the mainstream blogs are coming from already, but i do watch them because you will find good thoughts still...here and there...once in a while ;) , and mostly because i like the interweaving conversatin', y seeing awakenings happen in many areas, and i feel this awakening spreading everywhere, and having to do with looking deeper in many areas, not just race, but certainly related to those kinds of considerations, ones we've ignored too long.

--

rafael, so much ties into the dialogue these days, and i like to think we all add and just bounce and riff on and off. your p'cast referenced my "speech rules" post, i reference yours, heraclitus references mine, i reference sylvia, Dood X references heraclitus, on and on and on. as i wrote to Arcturus this morning in an email, if anything is working with these blogs its that we have one hell of a big conversation going...and it goes on and on and on. but if you ever link and quote Green Day again on my blog again, i swear i will troll rate you.

oh...you can't troll rate people here. okay, well. then quote and link on!

--

cero, the word WHITEPROGRESSIVE freezes people in their tracks. that's what i'm worried about. once you call yourself a progressive, well. your label sort of takes care of things, eh? then anything you do or think is "progressive"? like that cat who busted into my Speech Rules thread, got all pissy and laying down rules before splitting with three last words and he wants to think his behavior is "progressive?" it reminds me of Eugene, OR, one of the whitest cities i've ever seen. everyone thinks they progressive because they tie dye and compost and ride bikes. but they ignore the history of racism and the racism now in OR, and they ignore the fact that there are like 99% white people living in such a "progressive" town. it's not all that impressive this nombre de pragressssib

--

and sylvia, rOwr!!

--

thank you everyone else, and thanks for the love, mi turtlebellita :)

Duck and cover! True enough ese, I mean we do feed on each other, the lines blur, the ideas merge and new combinations arise. As for Green Day, what can I say, the corporate monster that is iTunes got the better of me!

Peace!

these 'colorblind' people are facilitators in a systematic seizure of my ancestral land, my money, my food, my culture, my heritage, my health, my beliefs, my music, my mind so why not just let them take my color away as well,, same old one trick (manifest destiny) pony if you ask me! please assimilate me some more and make me transparent Oh COLORBLIND/COLORLESS ones , that i may no longer offend you with the generations of scars you have long forgotten about / do not be inconvenienced with history

what ever // keep up the good fight nezua

word up tizoc. you're spittin it on tha real.

great work. i've been hooked on a daily visit to your site since i saw your work at Jesus' General.

i was hoping, last night, avaracist would respond to your comment on his blog. i guess he's not quite that stupid.

hey, thanks so much, e to tha rizzle. 'scuse me whilst i finish chuckling over the nickname you cooked up for Dood.

well, i guess not, to answer your question. but you know. i'm always down for a good throwdown.

seriously, tho—I'm not trying to pile on, but I'm just plain amazed that a person could even begin to try and defend such an idea that the weight is on those who have suffered colonization and oppression and racism to "prove" that slurs are hurtful or their experience is valid!!! and to call yourself "progressive" with such an arrogant attitude? what a laugh. i mean dont get me wrong: we all have ignorance, myself certainly included. i personally begin with the assumption that we all have ignorance and crummy attitudes somewhere within to work out. it's a good way to keep an eye toward humility, and just plain realistic in such a diseased and confused culture. but Dood's take seems to be the exact opposite. "I'm saintly and unerring in my decisions and attitudes. Prove I'm not."

eh. anyway. everyone should have the chance to change. and it ain't about his post. naw, naw. it's about his behavior when confronted. just like some others I've seen. this kind is nice n glossy when they can calmly type their posts and create a persona. but let them interact in real time and the Ugly begins to peek out. that's what happens when you blind yourself to some of yourself.

thanks for the propz, my friend.

I'm digging it, and then:

"...using fancy English or anger"

...I know you are the one who left the door open on my toolshed, ese. Don't make me use flowery epistles drenched with righteous wrath, now.

;>)

My credo is nobody wins if we all don't win. Period. The grindstone won't feel your tears so nose up and get it on.

I'm not bamboozled by white folks who help because they're told to, like it's a classroom exercise with no real-time consequences...And neither is anyone else with any sense.

Keep keeping, Nezua...The sooner people are forced to discard their tailor-made illusions about themselves and the world we all live in, the better.

right on. well said.

and just so it's clear, i wasn't yankin your chainsaw, 'mano. in my mind other plums were dancing. if you wanna take a bite tho, it's all free. cuz dig it, some methods are not so original, but time-worn tactics (this makes it easy to spot them after a while). 'specially if you, yourself have used them. :) one of the greatest benefits to self-awareness is the chance to avoid becoming a Type. (which you could never be!)

we're cool. see my hands up? don't bust out the flowery epistles, vato! and as i know you will, keep on with ya bad self.

Much love, Nezua...I'm pushing for the 'Master Race' to wise up or die off, myself.

Flowery epistles holstered

;>)

One thing, though...What's up with giving a brother man a whiteface special?

Don't you know the shit you can get into with that business, 'mano? Learn from the grief of others.

;>)

bring up tender memories? i guess it's a good thing there's no painful historical precedent of killer mimes running for office. :)

Shit, if only ICP would run for Michigan Attorney General or something...All those f*ckin' party clown wannabe mimes would be popping out like cowpatty 'shrooms after the rain and we'd have them by their pasty white teabags, then.

;>)

your one articulate brotha, that is why they run como las cucarachas when they see you comin' bro.

i'm CLEEEEN también!

thank you 'mano. i value your backup and you KNOW this.

as a guero, I see color. But I really don't give a shit. I am really not white more of a pink color really. PINK POWER arriba

yo soy Horsedooty!

now emblazon that slogan on a big pink hat with a flower and stuff your pockets full of gossamer easter grass, and you'll make todo el mundo smile. and the children will follow you whereva you go!

Hey, should I represent that remark?

I was reading earlier this evening about Carlos Montezuma, the Yavupi doctor who pushed for American Indian voting rights (a little forgotten history -- American Indians weren't citizens of the United States until 1924, and didn't gain voting rights in all states until 1948). Nobody in power (even the WHITEPROGESSIVES) gave it much thought until WWI. Native Americans weren't citizens, and they weren't resident aliens, so Dr. Montezuma argued they couldn't be drafted.

Woodrow Wilson agreed, but the Army needed all the manpower it could get (even after deciding Puerto Ricans were citizens ... i.e., draft bait). Native Americans did serve in the Armed Forces. Which created another "problem"... the Armed Forces were segregated at the time. So, "Indians" were "white." But, now that the Armed Forces are integrated, they're back to being "non-white". And Puerto Ricans went from "colored" to "Hispanic".

"Race" isn't exact... but for right now it's how the goodies are divvied up between "us" and "THEM". I'd prefer less "divvying, and more talk about rich and poor, or the "digital divide" or one of the other markers we use to make distinctions, but it looks like in this society, people are still going to use "race" for the next century or two (if we survive that long). And, that sucks.

I'm gonna cut my homies (the WHITEPROGRESSIVE posse) a little slack. I was at a meeting of a nice progressive group last Monday (right on stuff like solar energy and dry land gardening) and noticed the audience was entirely WHITE people (ok, one African-American, but his wife was "white"). My paper wouldn't let me call the group an "ANGLOmeration" (not in print, anyway).

I'd dropped a hint that maybe the locals (who know a lot more about gardening in the desert than these transplants from Minnesota and Iowa) might be useful... and that the locals were a tad different than they were ... are trying to arrange to meet at the local Catholic Church Hall next time. God bless them... they're trying to do the right thing.

how history repeats. now the govt wants to use migrant Mexican@s to line their caskets with; what a groovy solution for both the terrifying ALIEN INFLUX as well as the fodder-shortage problem brought about by the latest greed war. it's nice to know there's always the Brown™ around to put in the ground.

"...it reminds me of Eugene, OR, one of the whitest cities i've ever seen. everyone thinks they progressive because they tie dye and compost and ride bikes. but they ignore the history of racism and the racism now in OR, and they ignore the fact that there are like 99% white people living in such a 'progressive' town." -- nezua

This pretty much describes the entirety of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Being "colorblind" is easy when you're surrounded by people who look exactly like you. The "whiteprogressives" out here are the worst, and they are legion, so there's a perpetual circle of backpatting and self-congratulation going on. Their colorblind whiteprogressive attitudes are never challenged by any actual diversity, so they go on thinking that they're "bestest in the world." I fantasize about making them live in Oakland or Chicago or New Orleans for a while, just to reveal their true faces.

Yo se. Some of those gente come up here and live, feeling they are all Evolved and Enlightened and Natural and Progressive, and, well, it makes me...it makes me want to compost.

The rise of the Foreign Legions. What really perturbs me is that many so called progressive see nothing wrong with this, disregarding the history behind it. Basically it a way to shift the burndens and cost of war to foreigners. Temp them with citizenship, send them to a foreign land and if they survive then maybe they get to be citizens.

"I fantasize about making them live in Oakland or Chicago or New Orleans for a while, just to reveal their true faces."

I've seen it done and they do not survive except by staying in enclaves with each other. Yet they very much want to be seen as hip, and do not take kindly to natives perceiving them as white.

Note for instance that some of my N.O. friends refer to the lauded Common Ground progressives, many imported from Oregon, as 'colonizers and carpetbaggers, telling us how to live.' I do not know enough about that situation to opine, but the comment is telling.

Hey Horsedooty, you're funny! :-) I've had my skin color diagnosed at the Prescriptives counter and it turns out to be pale lemon - who'd have thunk?

How much our perception changes our perspective I don't know. I leave that to the artists among us. Maybe one reason I have a slightly different view and sometimes argue with Nezua is that for the last several years, I've been the "racial" minority every place I've lived (before moving to Mexico, I was living in Houston's "los Alturas"), but assumed to be one of the guys in economic control. Being "lower upper-middle class" yeah, my interests are with the lower class, which in the U.S. is presumably "of color".

George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" is still valid today. Orwell's England was divided on class lines, not "racial" ones, but the problem really isn't all that different in 2000+ America and 1930s Britain. OUR myth is that we're a mostly classless society, but we use "color" instead. "Colorblindness" may be a comforting myth, but what people are talking about is this class-myth. People are willing to accept the local East Indian doctor or professor or businessman as "white", but they're still surprised that a black or brown native born person is "clean and articulate".

Geeze, you can see why I prefer Mexico. The prejudices there are just simple ones based on money and access to power. Normal ones.

yes, i am an artist among you. :)

there's no reason to argue with me, güero. i'll never understand why my life experience and vantage point has anything to do with where you live, or your being a white man in Mexico. i'll just never get that.

and um..."normal prejudices?" i can't even imagine what that means.

i think you're just too much up in ya head on this, you with your orwell and sech. reacting from your belly and then referencing your head. and i know you won't find my life in there. you will find it, however, in this blog. and it will remain what it is, even if you quote ten books. and considering you are a White guy living in Mexico, I don't even know who you mean when you say "OUR myth."

PS maybe one reason you have a "slightly different view" than me is because....(wait for it): you ain't Brown™ in America?

now emblazon that slogan on a big pink hat with a flower and stuff your pockets full of gossamer easter grass, and you'll make todo el mundo smile. and the children will follow you whereva you go!

I hope that this is with smiley faces all over it. That is how I made my post and how I intended it.

yo soy Horsedooty!

Nezua said in your article, "Being WHITE means you get to make the rules." But not here I say. The Unapologetic Mexican makes the rules here flaco. The pink one has to abide by those rules.

yo soy Horsedooty!

Horsedooty, do you really think I could use flowers, easter grass, pink hats and exclamation points without smiling?

:) :) :)

we cool?

"White Progressive" is too long. How about "whigressive", or just "wigressive"?

It's short enough that I can tattoo it to my body, like Sylvia and Turtlebella intend to do with "oversensitive". I'm thinking of using a nice pinkish-ivory color, so the word disappears against my natural skin tones, and I don't get my ass kicked by people who think it means "librul".

jeje...oh LG! i just don't even know you anymore without your Gravatar!!! ;)

that tat sounds like a sure datemaker.

I'll be more popular than Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

..."normal prejudices?"
Ya got me :-)

How about "less attractive features of human nature" or something like that? I'm either old enough, or burned out enough, to accept that humans have always done stupid and irrational things, and probably always will ... even the best-intentioned of us. My only hope is we're slightly less stupid and irrational at some time in the future (if we have one).

I shouldn't post after midnight. Argument didn't mean "you're wrong and I'm right" (or vice-versa), but OK, I'll show you my (reasons), let's see yours." hear yours."

Nezua,

we be cool! no hay problemo senor!

yo soy Horsedooty!

i'm way late jumping on this bandwagon (i came through a link at... ilkya's i think?), didn't realize til a second ago that the post was from february. but anyway,

i'm a lurker, & just wanted to say, great post.

my school is 90% WHITEPROGRESSIVES who are so smart they don't need to be POLITICALLY CORRECT, and very quickly label you an OVERSENSITIVE for pointing out the difference between POLITICALLY CORRECT and bigoted because RACIST is something they certainly are not. i'd like to pass this on to the lot of 'em.

gracias, pigeon. enjoy with my blessing.

GO NEZ!

thanks, Vidrio!

OoooOOOoooh -- in light of the Eugene, OR mentions above, let me tell y'all my Portland, OR story.

So I'm listening to the Progressive(tm) radio station and the host of this talk show is mistified that rightwingers are able to use abortion as a wedge issue amongsts Persons o' Color. Absolutely mistified. Since the majority of Americans are cool with abortion, how can this be? She gets a caller: he's confused. She gets another caller: boy, is he ever confused.

So I decide to help her out -- having had the benefit of not being white and going to not-white churches in childhood, I can easily dispell this confusion. I call her up and begin what I think is a fairly helpful description of black church culture and its relationship with the Democratic party writ large: e.g., the relationship sucks and it's the Democrats' fault. The Repubs. play into the division that the Dems create along class and race lines, Dems take blacks for granted, abortion and family plannning are rarely treated rationally, maturely by the national Dems -- it's a third rail, etc. The main point is that some black churchgoers see abortion as a moral wrong and are not engaged in an intellectually-sound debate with those that disagree.

The host's response? "You're wrong."
The host admits to have never been outside OR and CA.
The host points out she's white.
She also points out that she's never been in a black church.
But boy, she knows an awful lot about them.

I bullshit you not, she then returns to fielding calls from white guys about how the situation has no explanation.

Good times.

yeah, that's pretty much perfect. thank you for sharing that story here. wisdom told as only lived experience can demonstrate. you'd die laughing if you started, you know?

I used to live in Springfield, OR - right next door to Eugene. I think I saw one black man ever in Springfield, and he may have followed me there from Eugene to hit on me, because that's what he was doing.

He was an incredible flirt.

I read no one of consequence's story, and I think the radio show host was threatened by the idea that the democratic party could be racist and had to do that white deflection thing to deny the very possibility. "No, no, it can't be racism. It has to be something else! After all, other white people have assured me that racism doesn't exist anymore.

It always feels weird to me as a white person when I say I'm losing my trust for white people as a group. It's not just racism, there's other stuff behind it, but that's basically it.

Thanks to Oprah, Obama camp claims biggest crowd yet

Thanks to Oprah, Obama camp claims biggest crowd yet

Thanks to Oprah, Obama camp claims biggest crowd yet