Yes we can.

It's just a video kind of week this week. My husband sent me this link. Enjoy.

Don't it make my brown eyes blue...

Allow me to take a a few minutes of your time today. These videos are pretty self-explanatory. The first one gets off to a slow start, but they are most definitely worth watching. If you've seen them before, I encourage you to watch them again--I find that I get something new with each viewing. Pay really close attention to the facial expressions of these children, and how aware of the world around them they seem at only 8 years old.



And the next day, with the roles reversed.



And before we explain this away by saying it was decades ago, let's not forget about this video I posted from the 21st century. This one is shorter, only three minutes.


Thoughts? Feelings? Comments? Questions?

I'd love to hear them.

Lord of the Dance

In honor of St. Patrick's Day. Yeah, I know it was yesterday--you wanna make sumthin' of it?



First golf, now this--is there anything we can't do?

(:

They print my message in the Saturday Sun...

This is a video that I want you to watch of an experiment that a high school student did as part of school project:



I think like Kiri says at the end of the video, the goal is not for people to pick the black doll over the white doll as being the "good" doll. I think an ideal situation would be for the kids to say, " I can't make such a judgment based on simply looking at the dolls, I'm going to have to play with them to get to know them better." That my friends, would be a huge step in the right direction.

I would argue that it is indcidents similar to the ones I talk about here, here, and here that contribute to the results that we see in the video. It's all connected, people...

What are your reactions to watching this video? What do you think the results would have been if she asked 21 white children?

If you would like to watch the full documentary (it's only 7 minutes,) you can do so here.

My pinky's valued over $300,000...

So the topic of today's post is about "talking black" vs. "talking white." Now, I have to be honest and say I know exactly what people mean when they say someone "sounds black." We like to get all indignant when people say stuff like that, like when Prince Harry said something recently to a black comedian. But what exactly are we getting upset about?


I want to take a detour here and share the first time someone decided to call out how I spoke differently. And newsflash: it wasn't a white person, it was some black kids from my grandma's neighborhood. I was about six or seven and visiting my grandmother in Cleveland. My grandmother lived in a predominantly black neighborhood, and I was outside with some of the neighborhood kids. The conversation went something like this:


Them: Are you here visiting your grandmother?
Me: Yes.
Them: Is (insert myblackfriend's mom's name here) your mom?
Me: Yes.
Them: (getting somewhat exapserated) Don't you know how to say, "Yeah?"
Me:


::wait for it::


Me: Yes.


Now, I don't actually remember these kids explicitly saying, "You sound white," but that was certainly the implied message. Because, I didn't use more informal language, something was weird or different about me--and they needed to make me aware of that. Now I know they were just kids, but the fact of the matter is even today in 2009, a black adult can tell another black adult that they sound white, and the "white sounding" black adult is the one that is supposed to feel bad.

Let me shift gears a little bit more. I'm going to link to a video and say that it is NSFW and has what some people might consider offensive language.




[Edited 4/2017: Chris deleted his youtube channel, so here is the same video that someone else reposted. Nothing you post on the internet goes away. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjCCr6w9-wk]


So this guy is clearly white, and he "sounds black." There are lots of other white people in the world who talk like this guy, too. How do we explain this? Maybe because it's not your skin color that determines the way that you speak.


I also want to make it clear that I am not saying one way of talking is inherently better than the other way. Some people might argue that we should all talk the "white way" and those are the same people that think everyone in the world should speak English. That's boring. It might be a little harder to understand someone who speaks differently than you, but that's your opportunity to turn your ears on and work your listening skills. You might also learn some new words. And all people, need to lay off the idea that people who's skin is a certain color need to speak a certain way--because that's just wack.


As always, I welcome your comments.