Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Black History Month: An Objective Perspective

On McSweeney's ...

11 comments:

  1. Anonymous2/08/2006

    TAN, you are sooooooo ridiculous. this is funny.

    oh and I loooove black. glad you took a moment to celebrate him

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  2. Anonymous2/08/2006

    I always got the sense Black was a she.
    Not to be too flip, but were the funeral services for Coretta postponed so Bush could kill two birds this February? I mean, she passed on the 30th, but...

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  3. Anonymous2/08/2006

    I dont' know. I think "he" works. Most of the black association is still sort of negative, and negative is still more man-like than feminine.

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  4. Anonymous2/08/2006

    "Sarah" says negative is more man-like than feminine. Hmm. Let me guess: woman, Sarah?

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  5. Anonymous2/08/2006

    ummm, yeah. obviously I'm a woman (though I was listening to the song "more than a woman" last night), so maybe I'm biased. But I think it's an objective truth. Guys bring a lot of the negative nonsense into the world. violence, greed etc... those are masculine traits.

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  6. Anonymous2/08/2006

    Wow, you're serious.
    While I tend to agree about men being a negative thing in this world, I think it's due to our simplified makeup and the fact that we hold much of (okay, all) the power, not necessarily because we have violence and greed on lock. Humans share that shit, men and women.
    My goal is to get women sharing in the power, and with it the violence and greed. Hey presto: equality.

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  7. You know, I've read quite a few of these 'it's black history month'posts, but I must say, that yours is one of my favorites.

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  8. Black history month to me seems like america's half assed apology for the wrongs they commited through out black history

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  9. Anonymous2/09/2006

    My God, you're brilliant sometimes.

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  10. odes - i agree. I always felt that history is continous, not just once a year.

    The female is usually the womb, and the male the perpetrator (like the obelisk).. So TAN flipped the script on black, maybe to outline the absurdity of it all.

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  11. Anonymous9/25/2006

    To continue Sarah's thread (above)...

    Don't know the gender of a doctor? This MD usually ends up being referred to as a male. Don't know the gender of a bank robber? A man did it. Unavailed of the gender of a secretary? She's a woman.

    Time? Father Time goes bye bye December 31st, and the gender of the new year? I'm thinking neutral; it's just a baby.

    Our Spanish-speaking compadres assign a gender to everything, don't they?

    For some reason we're not allowed to call female actors "actresses" anymore, which if we could describe them thusly, and then go on to address female doctors "doctresses," and female bartenders "bartendresses," I think it would clear up more confusion than it creates.

    But that's just my opinion.

    Regrouping, so is "black" male, and is "male" negative? In the US doctors are "male," allegedly positive, but in Russia, where 75% of all docs are female, I bet the story's different.

    Overall, I agree with Sarah's sentiments. I think a bigger problem though is calling individuals "they" when it should be he or she or s/he. What do we really need? A neutered 3rd person personal pronoun besides "it."

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