I hate being white....

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I do. I hate it. I hate that North American white culture is so shallow and stupid. I hate that my very existence represents all the horrible things that were done to the superior, and noble native peoples of this land (and other amazing creeds and cultures as well). I hate that most likely my ancestors were the cause of so much pain, and suffering.

I hate my hazel eyes, my pale skin, and my blonde hair. I look at myself and i see a monster.
...

Also, well, what can I do to bring myself out of this? Can I bring myself out of this?

It's hard enough to feel guilty about our own flaws and shortcomings that taking on the burden of our ancestors as well is more than anyone should have to bare. For all the failings of individuals or groups of your (or any) race, there are as many or more tremendous achievements, incredible heritage and great examples of humanity.

I don't know how old you are miss, and while I can sympathise with some of the more shallow, cultural aspects of modern day society, the majority of people will not judge you for that. The greatest bulk of people you'll ever likely know and more so those you'll call friends will not judge you based on your skin nor the misdeeds of ancestors long since dead. You'll mix and work with diverse people (assuming you're not specifically from really homogenous parts of the country) and what matters is who you are, how good you are at whatever you do and how you interact with other people.

I'll give you a personal thought from the other side of the coin. While not religious particularly, I am a jew and as I got to my 20s and lost loved ones I began to get a greater appreciation of my own heritage, culture, tradition and so on (again, not necessarily the "religious" parts). But I've seen, heard and read some of the most unbelievable things that make me look in the mirror and wonder what twist of fate it was that had me born into a race so hated by so many. I've never met, harmed or in any way affected people who hate me with a scary amount of passion. I almost want to meet these people to ask why. Or more truthfully, "WTF?". ;-) There is a huge amount of hate out there, but every now and then a story comes along that gives some hope.

You can, should and will get over your dilemma. I don't mean this to be patronising, though it can't but sound it so please forgive me...but it's normal to question and it does you great credit to feel for the injustices of the past. The best thing you can do is learn from that and be better for having learned those things and never allowing them to happen again. Take pride in the culture and heritage of your ancestors, learn from the mistakes of the villains and you'll be a greater person than you were before you thought to wonder about this.

 

[UbarElite]

Hello Valis. Fellow white person here.

Our race sucks, or, at least, has a very poor track record. However, trying to say that we are bad because of what others in our race do or did is just as foolish as the racism that led to such atrocities.

Have you ever forced anyone out of their homes? Do you own slaves? I imagine not. If you did, then yes, you probably deserve to feel guilty. If not, then don't feel guilty about what others have done.

yeah because africans dont slave trade, the japanese never raided and murdered the chinese, moari never cannibalized...everyone. seriously, no race smells of roses. white people are no worse than anyone else

Never said other races aren't bad, they just weren't the focus of the original topic.

 

[Xcelsior]

The fuck? seriously? I'm sorry but hating yourself because you're white and because of what your ancestors did is just stupid. You had nothing to do with the actions that they carried out so why feel guilty?

 

[Totenkopf]

Hey, you're not responsible for the deeds of anyone who shared your skin colour.
I mean, what kind of logic would that be? I'll tell you: bad logic
History is meant to educate us, to teach us the lessons of the past, and inspire us, not to toss us into a pit of despair over the sins of the past.

You know, in my homeland, Germany, there a vast legion of traitors, an unofficial cult of guilt so to speak, intending and devoted to drown every sense of heritage, nationality and patriotism.

"Hey, you German are a patriot? You really dare to value your own heritage and try to preserve and protect it? You really dare to respect your ancestors? You really dare to support the soldiers of your land? That means you are a nazi and support the holocaust"
^ That is their logic, I'm neither joking nor exaggerating.

Needless to say, I despise them. They loathe their own fatherland, discourage unity, denounce and demonize their own, our ancestors, even deny historical "schoolbook"-facts. And our democracy and it's mentality was the medium that evidently carried this cancer to this land.

Personally, I identify with my heritage, and to be honest, I generally identify more with the past (this country has existed before the world wars, too, you know) than with this phoney present that was shaped by the lies and hypocrisy of those traitors.

 

[Caliostro]

So... Let me get this straight... You're sad over a group of genetic characteristics you had no control over whatsoever, because those specific racial traits are associated with the negative things random assholes, who never even dreamed you'd ever exist,m or are in any way shape or form related to your own actions, committed hundreds of years ago.

Seems illogical at best.

 

[boyvirgo666]

Hello Valis. Fellow white person here.

Our race sucks, or, at least, has a very poor track record. However, trying to say that we are bad because of what others in our race do or did is just as foolish as the racism that led to such atrocities.

Have you ever forced anyone out of their homes? Do you own slaves? I imagine not. If you did, then yes, you probably deserve to feel guilty. If not, then don't feel guilty about what others have done.

yeah because africans dont slave trade, the japanese never raided and murdered the chinese, moari never cannibalized...everyone. seriously, no race smells of roses. white people are no worse than anyone else

Never said other races aren't bad, they just weren't the focus of the original topic.

point taken my apologies my point is all races have good and bad points if you choose to focus on such things. which i dont i just like history

 

[Grand_Arcana]

Yes, we white men took slaves from Africa to the Americas. Guess how we got them? We bought them from OTHER AFRICANS. Why do people seem to think that Europeans where the only ones who had slaves? NEXT TO EVERYONE HAD SLAVES, and you, as a white person, have no more need to feel ashamed over historical slavery then every other ethnicity on Earth.

In short, Every race has done evil, every culture has blood on their hands. As a white man, I feel my ethnicity has done a reasonable job of fixing the problems it has caused. There is an Atticus Finch for every Bob Ewell, an Abraham Lincoln for every General Lee. If this is insufficient for you, and you feel guilt regardless of the crimes of other races then that is fine. Let that drive you to even greater heights of tolerance, and work to rout out prejudiced behavior wherever you may find it. But please, don't urinate upon your entire culture, history, and people just because a few of 'em were dicks! And for the love of St. Peter, don't feel you are destined, by the color of your skin, to be just as shallow as your kinsmen! Trust me when I say we, of all the different races, can be better then our past, and more to the point, be better then our present.

PS-I apologize if you don't get the second last reference-It's from Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". If you haven't read it, I sugest doing so ASAP. A good book will do wonders to keep your mind of things.

Well, slavery in West Africa didn't have the same concept of a caste system as it did in Egypt and the rest of the world. Being a slave in West Africa was a temporary circumstance; no one was enslaved for life, and slaves were not regarded as animals like they were in the eyes of American pseudo-intellectuals

The first europeans to deal with the africans of the ivory coast were the Dutch. They approached the natives as equals, and respected their leaders as kings. The general attitude towards the africans changed as the centuries wore on. At worst, yes, the african slaves were treated like cattle; at best, the europeans saw them as less developed brethren.
During colonial times, The French treated the african natives like lesser brothers. Any person born on French soil, they reasoned, was a frenchman, entitled to the same rights as any other frenchman.

My point is that saying "every culture is equally evil" isn't very accurate. There is good and bad in every culture, every period in history. To understand history, you can't think of some things as inherently "better" than others.

^All of this is true. The point of my post was to dispel a myth: to say that Africans sold other Africans into slavery is like saying that giving a handful of cheap beads to American Natives in exchange for land was a fair and legal transaction. West Africans had a completely different concept of slavery than Europeans, Egyptians, and Asians, just like Natives had no concept of owning land.

 

[Valis88]

You see when I was in school I was never taught that native peoples did any wrong. I don't now if it's because we lacked resources or book or perhaps my teacher...but we were taught that they simply lived lightly off the land, and never killed anyone. That we were the ones that brought disease, death and war to them....we were the only ones. I carried that all through my life that before we white people came here North America was a beautiful utopia of peace and ancient spirits, and noble ancestors.

From my own observations I always envied other races in that they could be so proud of who they were. I wanted to be proud like that but what could I be proud of? I felt I had absolutely nothing. I also observed that other peoples seemed to have such a unity of mind. They always could nod or laugh with each other and be so close...due to a shared rich heritage and lots of traditions.

I envied it and I wished that I had that...I wanted pride, unity, and ancestors.

Now I know that I have allot of reading to do. Lots of things that I need to research....and perhaps some therapy, and counselling.

 

[pffh]

I envied it and I wished that I had that...I wanted pride, unity, and ancestors.

Now I know that I have allot of reading to do. Lots of things that I need to research....and perhaps some therapy, and counselling.

Find out where your ancestors are from and study that countries history and culture and I'll bet you will be happily surprised by what you find.

 

[2fish]

You see when I was in school I was never taught that native peoples did any wrong. I don't now if it's because we lacked resources or book or perhaps my teacher...but we were taught that they simply lived lightly off the land, and never killed anyone. That we were the ones that brought disease, death and war to them....we were the only ones. I carried that all through my life that before we white people came here North America was a beautiful utopia of peace and ancient spirits, and noble ancestors.

From my own observations I always envied other races in that they could be so proud of who they were. I wanted to be proud like that but what could I be proud of? I felt I had absolutely nothing. I also observed that other peoples seemed to have such a unity of mind. They always could nod or laugh with each other and be so close...due to a shared rich heritage and lots of traditions.

I envied it and I wished that I had that...I wanted pride, unity, and ancestors.

Now I know that I have allot of reading to do. Lots of things that I need to research....and perhaps some therapy, and counselling.

Because I am nice and also bored here have a quick thing from the wiki page about canada's natives.

SlaveryMain article: Slavery in Canada
First Nations routinely captured slaves from neighbouring tribes. The conditions under which such slaves lived were much more humane than the conditions endured by African peoples forcibly brought as chattel by Europeans to the Americas. Slave-owning tribes of the fishing societies, such as the Yurok and Haida lived along the coast from what is now Alaska to California .[67] Fierce warrior indigenous slave-traders of the Pacific Northwest Coast raided as far as California. Slavery was hereditary, the slaves being prisoners of war and their descendants. Among Pacific Northwest tribes about a quarter of the population were slaves.[68]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Nations

So while I do respect many native people as I said in my first post, I base it on the person's actions not their race. So just figure every race has their own dirty past.

Spoiler: this book is so true of humans and the crap we do to each other

So any schooling that said that there were a perfect people was idealized and false after all everybody has their bad apples and everyone poops.

 

[kaveradeo]

maybe change your avatar?

Hahaha! Not very often I actually "LOL" at something at the net like I just did. Seriously just laughed out loud. Well done!

So you want to be black? Wait, in Rio black people kill all the time, not to mention black people are associated with gang culture. What about the Asian? Wait they had ninja and samurai's, theres also the Yakuza.

So what colour do you want to be? No matter what you pick they are all the same.

I would love to know how the native people are superior to you or how the actions of ignorant white supremacists effects you.

It seems you put way too much weight behind skin colour, how pigmented your skin is has nothing to do with who you are as a person. You could be the meanest, nastiest white person who a saint ... some goes for black, Asian or Smurf.

i try. glad to get the satisfaction

 

[Still Life]

Snip.

I'm an Australian Aboriginal person, and in my country the colonials committed the sort of atrocities that Hitler did to Jewish and other unfortunate peoples in Europe during the second World War, except over a greater period of time -- with eugenics only ending in the mid 1970s (see Stolen Generation). Because Australia has been politically quite slow and because it is a young country, the effects of invasion here are still felt by Aboriginal people to this day and there is much work to be done restore dignity and sovereignty to my people.

Do I resent my mixed heritage and non-Indigenous Australia? No. Sure, many things frustrate me about how backward my country can be, but I'm also a patriot because my country has a lot of potential and I expect the best out of it. Things in Australia are slowly changing for the better for Aboriginal people, because we are strong and determined to right the wrongs and move forward with our culture and identities.

The message should not be about guilt, but one of learning, truth and responsibility. In my country, non-Indigenous Australians need to face the fact that an important part of their population have been struggling and fighting for survival, while they have benefited from stolen land and livelihoods. Things are starting to change because people are realising this and knowing that different peoples and cultures bring more positives to the identity of a modern nation than negatives.

Also, learn that whiteness is a post-colonial concept that explains the impact colonialism has had on various indigenous societies. It's characterised by power and privilege, allowing for the disregard of sociocultural imbalances which perpetuate the discrimination against minority groups whether institutionally, socially, culturally, or otherwise. It is not really denotative of a particular racial group, but of a social construction(s).

I would suggest that you pursue your roots and your identity. If you're an indigenous person through bloodlines: explore it and take pride in that aspect of your life. Don't be afraid of history and don't be afraid of what you have, despite privileged and ignorant faces. Only you can answer the questions that you have proffered here in this thread. This is your journey, not this forum's.

Good luck