"But dig the emailing sonovabitch patting him on the head. 'It's been a long time since I've seen evidence of a Hispanic man taking responsibility for his actions and asking for forgiveness.'"

Ave Maria. However: the White Lens concept is really useful. I think there are some more lenses, similarly designed to cloud vision.

On behalf of me, that is disgusting and patronizing.

emailing knucklehead, shorter version: Mighty WHITE of ya!

'Bite the hand that pats the head, whatever its color'

yes, cero. rose colored ones, for example... i'm sure there are more. feel free to borrow the concept for your blog musings, free of charge. :)

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exactly, Ill Do Chay.

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good advice, darkblack.

shorter version: Mighty WHITE of ya!

-- Ill Do Chay

Heckuva job, Brownie.

adorable? machine? twice not human, and in only 11 words. insidiously white.

very efficient use of language, isn't it?

Q-vo. Nez, you crystalized our thoughts here. Not only about Goodboy syndrome. Also about the difference between understanding it, and living it. Almost even worse, to me, is to be aware of it and sometimes STILL doing it, I mean it is so ingrained by the dominant culture. This is shameful to say this. Years ago when I was maybe 13, there was a cigarette commercial on TV where someone opened up a pack of cigarettes and music played. My Tia saw this commercial, and we were at the store and she was asking the White man at the counter for the cigarettes that played music. He looked at her like she was an old stupid indian, shaking his head. I should have told him he was an asshole. I should have hugged her and said Tia it was only a commercial, and laughed along with her. I should have done a lot of things. What I did was, be embarassed and shake my head along with the White man. To let him know that I wasn't fooled by the commercial. To let him know I was more like him than like her. Thinking my lack of honor would make the White man think better of me. Playing Goodboy.

ah....joe, that hurt just reading it. thank you for sharing it, man. how easily we sell ourselves out, eh? but then, you know, we're human. and we redeem ourselves with this awareness, with these truths. it is shrinking away from looking inside that we keep it going.

and yeah, i hear you. it goes on. it's all around us, this pressure. i wish i could say i'm done for good. but i know my eyes are open. i'll be looking for it. i get stronger in this way every day.

and thanks for kicking it so raw and so real in here. you add a lot to what i'm trying to do, and it becomes what we're doing.

Gracias man.

Nezua, you "adorable entrepreneural creative machine," you! I guess that was complimentary. Sort of like ... oh... "clean and articulate" (I know you're articulate, and I'm guessing you took a shower some time in the last 24 hours).

Probably the only WHITEPROGRESSIVES who "get it" (and only partially) are gays... and it's damn hard work to have to live by someone else's expectations. It's real tempting to go ghetto (I lived in Houston's Montrose for a while), but it doesn't work for everyone. Not if duct tape figures in your concept of interior decorating, anyway. I donno... I think every minority person is in the same bind. What's "brown" and what's just Nezua? What's faggy and what's me? What's Obama and what's "clean and articulate"?

I gotta admit though, it was awfully gracious of you to accept "It's been a long time since I've seen a Hispanic man...blah, blah, blah." Maybe you're resorting to the stereotyped patient, polite, humble Mescan. :-)

Good essay.

damn...i guess i was unclear. this is not my newsletter. this is someone else's who i did not mention by name. he sends it out, i am a subscriber. those compliments were not aimed at me. they were aimed at Person X, who did accept the compliments. i was upset for him, talking to him in this post. does that make sense?

yes, i agree that gays have their own oppression to deal with, no doubt. i think every minority group is in similar binds, just with different twists here and there, you know? and in those differences, we can listen to each other and learn of the underlying similarities so we can not be fighting each other, when we are all suffering similar stories.

thanks, richard.

Sometimes I am the good girl (just because I'm alway doesn't mean I'm not gonna check you on that gender stuff, nez! and you too PD:). I think it is okay that people sometimes play along to get a little power and use it against your oppressors. I think the motive should be taken into consideration. Are these people playing the good boy/girrly because they have internalized wht supremacy or because they have another plan.

I had an interesting conversation with XP about this a while ago. To be a "house nigger" or a "field nigger"? as Malcolm X says. The "field nigger"--the slave that lived with the master and conformed to his rules-is a whole lot easier and brings rewards (thu only rewards in the colonial imaginary-things like money or status or, dare I say, a college degree). Think JLo or Shakira, who became successfull and died their hair blond.

But, although my college degree doesn't really mean much to me or too many indigenous communities, it means something to those with power and I sure do like to use privilege against privilege.... So, yes, sometimes I play their games.

welcome back!!

well, i don't know that you can really check me on this one, luisa, mi amiga. Goodboy was a name PD came up with years ago, and "Good Boy!" is an old saying, too. you sure can use your own version, that's cool. "Goodgirl" works, right?

and part of this for me is being male. at least in some of these examples. people are not going to lock their doors or hide their purse from you. do they? how often do you have to prove you are not a physical threat to people?

but yes, in the broader sense, we can both sell out to be more accepted, and that is universal despite sex. (gender actually applies to language, not humans, right? i'm whippin out my fancy ENGLISH skillz on ya! ;) and i see nothing wrong with you or anyone using the expectations of the colonizer to get what you/they want. if that feels right. but where i'm at now? no thanks. ain't gonna happen. i'm just too fresh from a place where that would feel like losing me all over again.

it's good to see you here once more. looking forward to your posts.

I think for women of color, a lot of our "goodgirl" moments revolve around personal appearance and how we present our personalities. Will we be confrontational? Do we seem to have manners? How do we wear our clothes and our hair? And often times, no matter how we approach these challenges, we're always susceptible to unwanted advances and aggression by our answers. The sting of both racial and sexual objectification creates a narrow alley for women to navigate.

i'm glad you commented on this, sylvia. because this is one area where PoC experience will differ a bit based on sex. that's what i was thinking after replying to luisa. and it is very valuable to me to hear those differences. there are confluences of sex/race issues in this "goodboy/goodgirl" issue, and i do not mean to discount the experiences of mis hermanas here at all. in fact, without hearing them, my progress on these matters would be greatly hindered.

A couple days ago I had a ten-year-old jokingly point out the flipside to goodboy syndrome. His cousin was stressing out about a speech she had to give in class and he said, "Just get up there and act black...they'll probably give you an A."

Hola Clams Casino.

Assuming this kid actually was black, isn't this the same thing? Bending to the Dominant Culture's expectations/racism in order to appease? Perhaps not to assuage fear, but yet a denial of the natural self in order to pave the way easier?

I think some of the perpetuation of these badboy/badgirl stereotypes is courtesy of our good friend MTV. They choose the most disagreeable and divergent people for their "reality" shows. So there's ALWAYS some loud mouthed POC, someone flamingly gay, some homophobic babblethumper, etc. The viewers of this claptrap then see that all sista's are loudmouthed beeyotches, that all teh gays are flaming nancyboys, etc etc.

Fine contribution to civilized discourse from MTV? Priceless.

Yes, Nezua, they are two sides of the same coin. Sorry, that was my point, but I'm posting quickly this morning and didn't have time to elaborate. And yes, the kid and his cousin are black.

Ill Do Chay, "perpetuation" is a good word. because we can't really blame TV for being a cause of these stereotypes/fears. it would be great if it were that simple. and don't get me wrong: i do put a lot of weight on our media when i talk about these things, such as in my At the Movies With Nezua series. that weight is well-earned, i think.

yet, TV is hardly an original or naturally-occurring piece of art; a principle document. it is more of an enchanted mirror. speaking back and forth to enchanted minds. i see, maybe, the makers of the show creating the characters/show presentation to reinforce their own images of people and society. people watch this, grow and reinforce their crooked Types...go on to become filmmakers, or just mistaken citizens who reinforce the fear by projecting it onto PoC, etc. (of course, even PoC become these show/filmmakers, too.) without real awareness (and yeah, with too much TV, too) we can all become brainwashed.

kill your television the bumper stickers said when i was a child. i have done so. although it said nothing about DVD players. ;)

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Clams Casino: gotcha. you make a great point.

Nezua and ill do chay,

there's a great documentary called "merchants of cool" that details how MTV "researches" what kids want, gives it to them in caricatured form, and in turn, encourages them to become caricatures. it's a reciprocal, self-feeding process. E.G. kids do a certain dance or have a certain style; MTV coopts it, sexualizes it, adds violence to it, and makes it marketable. in turn, kids alter their own dance or style to fit MTV's interpretation of it, thus commodifying their own creativity and identity. spit.

ugh. and to think i was giving them the benefit of the doubt, talkin' unconscious reinforcement of stereotypes. to think it is so cynical and conscious....having the experience i do in the field, i should be less naive. it never seems to wear off, this lean to think the best of humans. i dont know why by now i haven't given up entirely.

they hire 20-something white college grads with marketing degrees to focus group the "coolest" white teens. they're called "cool hunters", and they make about a half a mill a year.

humanity's best always thinks the best of humans. it's a burden for humanity's best and the only hope for humanity's worst.

Thanks erizzle. Increase 10 more points on my cynicism meter.

I guess we all have names for it, Goodboy/girl for me it is the "Si, señor spic." This is the image colonist had of us when they finished conquering the Southwest, which is the point I was making in my latest post. This is the view that has been passed down through a couple of generations.

...the press and politicians began to whip up anti-Mexican sentiments. Congress put the "Mexican problem" on the agenda. Every year from 1926 to 1930, Congressmen proposed bills expanding the quotas to the nations of the Western Hemisphere, clearly with Mexico in mind. Both the anti-immigration and capitalist pro-immigration lobby employed similar racist stereotypes to make their arguments. Both considered Mexicans a biologically inferior race, with natural tendencies towards docility and ignorance.

Kenneth L. Roberts wrote in the Saturday Evening Post:"and see endless streets crowded with the shacks of illiterate, diseased, pauperized Mexicans, taking no interest whatever in the community, living constantly on the ragged edge of starvation, bringing countless numbers of American citizens into the world with the reckless prodigality of rabbits." This happened during my grandmothers generation and she is still alive, that is two generations ago. The fact we are acting like a Goodboy/girl it is because, our relatives passed it down us as a way to survive. And look at us now, it is out of habit because this what we were taught.

"and part of this for me is being male. at least in some of these examples. people are not going to lock their doors or hide their purse from you. do they? how often do you have to prove you are not a physical threat to people?

"(gender actually applies to language, not humans, right? i'm whippin out my fancy ENGLISH skillz on ya! ;)"

How often do people think I am a physical threat? not often. But this doesn't mean my experiences are that of all WoC. For example, I have a friend who was jumped a while back by men. SHe was convinced that this wouldn't of happened if she had been a white woman. She was somehow asexualized because she was a bigger african american woman? People hide their purses from her. I don't have all the answers. It is a complicated issue but I think there are a lot of good boy/good girl things in common. On another note, WoC are stereotyped as hypersexual and, during colonialism and now, that is used to justify rape. Woc are supposed to stand silent while they are disrespected sexually. Many men of color don't have this experience...Is this part of being a good girl?

*must you bust out your fancy english skills? :) Language isn't objective. In Nahuatl, there is no "He" or "She" there is only "the person." (I should use the Nahuatl word from now on so we don't have to use the @ symbol). Maybe Nahuatl is less sexist..........Maybe I'm rambling again.

sadly, being big, heavy, black, sick, old, or anything else does not exempt women from male sexual aggression from what I know. a tragic fact of our world.

i do thnk there are a lot of things in common with WoC and MoC. i was just pointing out some things here were common to males, and being non-white makes us even more threatening sometimes. to certain people.

i always must bust out my langwidge skillz. nah, i'm kidding. i brought up the sex/gender thing simply because lately my head is deep in Español, where we are often talking about "gender" and thus my recent fixation on separating the use of "sex" and "gender." it really wasn't personal.

"The fact we are acting like a Goodboy/girl it is because, our relatives passed it down us as a way to survive." wrote XP.

Too true, and it might have been necessary for that at one time, but there are other ways and other days.

for you, zaecus? do you speak of your own experience here?

I tried to respond to this last night, but since it was on my cellphone, I have no way of knowing if it went through.

My mother couldn't have so accurately and successfully taught me the 'right way' to act, including accepting that any time someone had a problem with the way I 'behaved' or said things that it was my problem and my responsibility to fix it, if she hadn't known what to look for, what 'bad behavior' to correct, and the best way to do it.

She also couldn't have agreed with a woman who was saying horrible things about her 'weird' son, then defended it as the only polite thing to do (not once saying that she agreed, but instead didn't want to be impolite to a woman who was accusing her son of being a murderer in a satanic drug cult) if she hadn't learned the lesson of the 'right way' to act herself.

Yes, it's personal experience, and one I still struggle with, but I am sick, physically and mentally, of living down to other people's expectations.

well, i appreciate that. and it's good to draw parallels...if they help you, i'm all for it. i just don't know about the prescriptive part of your first comment. i would say the parallels are useful until one begins to tell others how they can resolve their problems. only because the problems are not really the same in all ways. and as i've found, anyway, prescriptive comments are rarely useful unless solicited. but i recognize your intent, and appreciate that part of it.