Monday, November 18, 2013

Is she overly sensitive or am I insensitive?

Disclaimer:  Both myself and the other blogger I refer to are white and in our 20s so we may not really have a clue what we are talking about.

So I watched an awesome video today.  Go ahead and watch and love it.  You can also see all of the sketches here. . .

Then read this rant not related to the video but what I thought was the rather harsh critique on it linked below the video. It says Dove missed the mark by still focusing on physical beauty.  Which according to that blogger we shouldn't do at all.  I think she would be happy if physical beauty was never referred to in media or social interactions again. But her biggest objection to it is that the differing races are not given equal attention and it is predominately white.  I totally, 100%, agree in racial equality and equal representation.  But after looking at all of the sketches a couple of times I would have featured the same ones Dove did not based on race but based on the fact that they had the most dramatically different results.  That to me is equality.  If I choose them because we needed one more black person that isn't just looking at people as people that is looking at people only for their color.

Also if we are talking about equal representation, "the U.S. population is 63.7% White, 16.3% Hispanic or Latino, 12.2% Black or African American, 4.7% Asian, 0.7% American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.2% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, 0.2% some other race, and 1.9% two or more races, for a total of 100%." *According to business insider based on the 2010 US census.

P.S. I did try looking up the data for myself but they make it very hard to access racial information and it can be hard to quantify because of over lapping race and ethnic questions.  If you don't believe me check out census.gov for yourself.

Just like in my earlier rant about gender equality, equal does not mean the same.

In the case of race God given equality and equal rights is not the same as equal numbers.

Now really we are all the freaking same so in a perfect world it should matter one bit what the hue of our skin is.  People are people so a white majority vote or population or black majority shouldn't freaking change anything but I know it does.

Still equal representation isn't 2 white people, 2 black people, 2 asian people, ect.  Equal representation is: "63.7% White, 16.3% Hispanic or Latino, 12.2% Black or African American, 4.7% Asian, 0.7% American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.2% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, 0.2% some other race, and 1.9% two or more races".

And if you want to talk about distorted representation check out this government page.  See how Hispanics (16%) get 2 link compared to African-Americans (12%) get 12 links?

And since I'm at it, and I know I'll get hate male for this; if I can't describe someone as black, if I have to say African-American then I can't be called white (cause really if you look at the color white and look at my skin I'm more of a peach color) I desire to always be referred to as caucasian.  Or since I'm only third generation American born as opposed to many people's 5-6 generations I would really prefer to be called Norwegian-American or  since we don't really specify which country in Africa or Asia people may have descended from Scandinavian-American would be better.

Not really that's ridiculous.  Can we all just call American citizens Americans?  That would be cool.
Unless of course you really are African-American like my cute little nephew who was born to one American parent and one Kenyan parent here on visa.  In my opinion he has all the right in the world to refer to himself as African-American.

*Personal note even as a kid I never answered race, ethnicity, gender, or religion question, not even age if I don't think it relevant.  Because I think they are stupid and shouldn't matter any more than if it is horse poop or cow poop burning on your porch, it stinks either way!
  -Except at a doctors office in which all of those, -religion, could have health factors.