'Daily Show' Proves That Race Is, Indeed, Still A Tricky Subject

I hope my cynical pov is proven wrong my friend.

 

I don't think you're as cynical as you think you are. I got dumped yet again last week and if somebody had made a dismissive response to what I've been posting I might have been in a funk today. But responses have been warm and your remark in particular has put me in a hopeful mind. If you were really cynical you would have retorted something hurtful.

 

I didn't create those clips. I got them off tumblr.

 

hmm. Like what? I'm curious about what you've said that has been interpreted wrong 180 degrees in your past.

 

I'm trying to think of something I said, but it's easier to think of something I DIDN'T say. I've been well trained, LOL.

At the same time everyone's been talking about the Trayvon Martin case I was coincidentally translating this book (a la Google translate, I barely know any Serbian) that goes into incredible detail about what happened to my kin, ethnic Serbs living as a minority in Croatia, in WWII. It lists every individual, with at least a sentence on who they were, what they did and how they died, along with a narrative on each village as a whole.

I was also becoming aware that we're different from other minorities in the sense that once you get to know us, you realize we all look alike. I'm constantly seeing family member's faces in these stories, making my identification all the more visceral. And all the kids. Toddlers kicked around like balls. Babies, a little four year-old Roknic boy (my grandmother's maiden name) who was lost at Jacenovac. Nuns were giving children poisoned milkshakes there. Grownups were being cremated alive. The Brejze Woods story I posted this week in the creative writing section -- there were so many kids. And if I'm going to write fiction around this I have to get into it as deep as I can, so I'm like really emotionally caught up in it. My son was so beautiful at four. And so bright. He's bi-racial and only one-eighth Serb, but he looks like he just stepped out of steerage. So I keep seeing him in all these stories.

And it usually popped into my mind when the black people around me were talking about Trayvon --all this talk about one dead child. What a luxury. So much attention, and no one's ever paid any attention to us. It was politically expedient to hush it up. At the time they were opening the Holocaust Museum, which has a room about us, there was so much politically expedient propaganda afoot that we were not invited. If you try to find the villages where we were from on Google maps, they're gone, renamed or bulldozed after our Removal in the Nineties. Like we never even existed.

But I never said anything because I knew that if I did, it would be interpreted to mean that I was trying to dismiss what happened because I didn't care, or I was on Georgie's side. The conversation would never go into any detail about where I was really at because there'd either be a dead silence, or it would go into an argument. Whatever the reaction, it was sure not to be remotely related to where I actually was, but somewhere 180 degrees removed. I'd be heard as a white person.

But it's more than just trying to avoid getting my own feeling hurt. I don't want to hurt someone else's while they're grieving a dead kid, and feeling outraged that it happened, and re-stimulated by all the little ways that scenario plays out so often. They need to express themselves and they deserve attention that's always been very easy for me to give. Those feelings have always been extraordinarily interesting to me. I wonder why? My anxiety is that after all these years of paying that attention, the favor will never be returned.

 

If you're saying: "why the big deal? It's just one kid who was killed and one killer who got off, and millions were killed in WWII" I can see why people would get pissed off, or at least write you off.

But if you're saying you can identify with the outrage over the zimmerman case because you know all too well how drastic things can get when people are silent in the face of injustice, then people will be happy to hear you out, happy that you don't have that ol' "blind spot" that so many others exhibit.

People should always make a big stink when other people can legally kill their children, basically as a birthright. That's the gist of the zimmerman case. And probably the gist of what happened to serbs in wwII.

And by the way, the same ilk who celebrate the fact that trayvon was killed and zimmerscum got off often regard WWII's nazis as heroes and compatriots. that much is obvious, but if you need proof, just check out the racist site site.

 

What I'm saying is that I wouldn't broach the subject at all because too many people, in my experience, would jump to the conclusion that I was saying Statement #1, who really just wanted a warm live body they could rake over the coals about it, and I don't need any more rakings. Didn't need or deserve the first. I have four bi-racial children myself. How do you think I feel about Trayvon?

I didn't know I was Serb. Grandma was passing for Croatian, the people who were slaughtering us. But me and my dad somehow knew and it came out in how we felt about the 'Serbs' over here -- black people. That's who my family has been for the past 40 years. That's who I chose. That's who was important to me. That's been my whole life, and absolutely nothing about it was easy. But if I shared what was in my mind during that trial with the people around me, they'll be likely to think I'm saying "why the big deal? It's just one kid who was killed and one killer who got off, and millions were killed in WWII." So I say nothing.

It's tiresome having to live such a censored life and to so often feel things that seem so unrequited.

You missed the last paragraph in what you quoted:

But it's more than just trying to avoid getting my own feeling hurt. I don't want to hurt someone else's while they're grieving a dead kid, and feeling outraged that it happened, and re-stimulated by all the little ways that scenario plays out so often. They need to express themselves and they deserve attention that's always been very easy for me to give. Those feelings have always been extraordinarily interesting to me. I wonder why? My anxiety is that after all these years of paying that attention, the favor will never be returned.​

I've got a tongue-in-cheek thread in the International Perspective, "How to Pick up Serbian girls" that goes into this long story. It's complicated. Or you can check out my home page.

 

I dunno, but it sound like self-censoring.

I can see treading carefully when it comes to emotional issues (with anyone, not just black people). But if you can genuinely relate to the outrage, nothing wrong with expressing that.

I think most black people would appreciate the solidarity and knowing that even nonblack people care about the issue

 

There is so much truth to this my friend. If you ever listen to Opie and Anthony Anthony Cumia is exactly this kind of person.