Hey, you can go vote now for who I’m gonna doodle inside 1000 books this fall. Check out the poll on the right.
Discussion (512) ¬
[ Comments RSS ]
Hey, you can go vote now for who I’m gonna doodle inside 1000 books this fall. Check out the poll on the right.
Loading ...
“REVERSE PRIVILEGE”
“what is that even”
“You know, where privileged folk have to suffer the burden of guilt of being privileged”
“STFU WALKY”
now if Billie’s box does indeed contain alcohol, well
Either Linda is passive-aggressive to Billie just like she is towards her actual children, or she just knows Billie really, really well.
Why do you think Ruth stayed with her so long?
well played.
Where privileged people suffer the burden of saying things that make them looks stupid?
Faceplanting on our privilege! …it tastes like a foot.
Yeah, I don’t really know how Walky even gets around with that thing in his mouth all the damn time.
thats why he has so much trouble just walkying away
Okay, now I’ve got an image of Walky sucking on the little toes of both feet simultaneously (in something like a butterfly stretch position) because he wondered to himself, “Hey, I wonder if I can suck on the little toes of both my feet simultaneously.”
I’ll have you know that, as a middle class white man, this post is super insensitive.
#stopthehate #truvictims #whyisntthereawhitehistorymonth
1, 2, 3, 4, I predict a flame war. 😉
Bro, I feel you bro. Honestly every time a marginalized group member like, exists, at like, y’know, normal people, it’s like a direct attack. Like, trying to make bros feel guilty and awful about shit.
It’s why my subreddit rants about the secret conspiracy of all those others out there trying to attack us with their guilt-inducing feelings and make us care about people who aren’t in the Honorary Bro Nation.
#solidarityfortherealvictims #feelingguiltyisworsethanactualoppression #singlemanlytear
Look, we’re not saying they can’t exist. We’re saying we shouldn’t need to NOTICE they exist!
#IgnoranceIsBliss
Welp, that stopped being parody somewhere in there.
This just makes me think of that time I was watching a YouTube video parodying a particular type of commercial. The video used the word diversity. And there was a gem in the comment cesspool that said :
“Yeah, diversity. You mean the genocide of the straight white male.”
And then my brain hemorrhaged and I had to go lie down.
Seriously? That is all kinds of stupid. As a straight white male, I am not feeling at all endangered.
Wow! It’s almost like Tumblr in here!
Because people are discussing serious issues? Did that make you feel uncomfortable so you had to say something that (frankly) isn’t really an insult?
This comments section almost always has a very straight-forward and detailed discussion of the issues contained in the comic and if you’re not interested in reading it I recommend that you steer clear of the comments section.
But there’s really no need to come down here flinging poop like a stressed out lil critter.
No, because you’re making posts pretending to be your opponents in order to make fun of them, complete with fake tags. Both sides do this on tumblr.
No need to assume the guy is being a jerk. He can just be making a joke the same way the rest of you are.
And, BTW, you aren’t having a serious discussion in this particular section. There are some, and those are great. But this is people poking fun.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but don’t try to make it sound like you’re doing something great and wonderful and the other guy is some evil man who is trying to stop you.
For the record, I never make fun and never say anything sarcastic.
trlkly, hunny, are you aware that “both sides” here aren’t, like, sports teams?
Because “victims of oppression” and “people who want to hurt victims of oppression” aren’t equivalent.
At my bus stop, there is one of those free newspaper dispensers. This one happens to be in Spanish (I can read a little bit of Spanish, so sometimes I try to read the headlines while waiting for the bus). One day, I got there to see a large bumper sticker posted on the side of that dispenser:
“DIVERSITY is a code word for #WHITEGENOCIDE”
I’m not white, and the neighborhood has a considerable Korean population. So a few days later, I brought a roll of duct tape and neatly taped over the text on the sticker. (Clever use of duct tape can solve SO MANY PROBLEMS, you guys.) A few months after that, the sticker (and the tape on it) had mysteriously vanished. Good riddance.
Neo-nazis and white supremacists are a pain in the ass. In Denmark, I lived in a refugee immigrant heavy part of the city (I think at the time it was mostly Kurdish, Syrian, and Indonesian) and so sometimes there’d be some neo-nazi graffiti about the usual BS (death to immigrants, that sort of thing). And just like you there was a troupe of individuals countering it when it cropped up either by covering it up or defacing it (over there, the anarchists’ main activism was scouring for neo-nazi graffiti and quickly editing it to make it about the nazis instead (so instead of “X, get out of the country” it was “nazis, get out of the country”).
I remember that mattering a lot to my neighbors as it made them feel like at least someone had their back against that kind of hate.
You are endangered, soon all people will be a generic beige like us half bloods muwhahahahaha >:)
You’re committing genocide by just waiting for us all to die without actually doing anything evil?
I don’t have a counter-plan for that!
I never understood why people talk about “white genocide” as something that is inherently bad.
As long as a genocide doesn’t involve actively killing a race, then who cares ? Even if a World Dictator were to suddenly demand forced castration of all members of my own race, I wouldn’t care, since having kids is not a right and it wouldn’t affect my life or anyone elses.
In a couple of centuries we might all become orange anyway, that doesn’t mean that I will turn orange myself.
No fair! I was totally going to shed a single manly tear, but now Cerberus said it like it was a white male privilege thing, so now it’ll just look stupid!
#misandry
#itisso
#ITISSO
#TASSIMO
Spencer and Cerberus for the hashtag-win.
#i<3unmistakablyironicirony
It’s a tad different when the privilege giver(or taker) is your parents.
That’s the whole point here. Have to agree.
Except MAYBE when you’re so jaded to it that any semblance of filial love is dead, gone, and forgotten, and it’s more like getting more junk mail from the Mormon church trying to get you to come back 10 years after you left.
… oh wait there’s a website to fix that now nm.
Want petty revenge on someone? Put their address into that site! THE INTERNET ALLOWS YOU TO BEAM MORMONS AT PEOPLE!
Truly, technology is wonderful.
…. I think the Geneva Convention needs updating.
Yeah, it is kind of is much suckier when you have to realise that being the ‘favourite’ has seriously screwed over your sibling for years. But it is a good thing Walky is noticing now, even though he might prefer to be blissfully ignorant because it might take a lot of effort to resolve this.
I don’t know how much more Walky can do to “resolve” the situation. He can acknowledge that he’s the favorite, and he can agree with Sal that the situation sucks and is unfair, but he can’t make Linda like her daughter.
He could share his stuff. Maybe Sal would like a dead rat?
Resolved in this case doesn’t have to mean ‘oh, they’re all a happy family now’, because it is true that he can’t make Linda like Sal, but he can actually stand up for his sister and just be there in her corner as someone who isn’t going to tolerate his parents treating her as lesser than him.
I dunno. I often think about the fact that I NEVER have to feel guilty about my ancestors leading to subjugation and death’s of most of the Native Americans. Ain’t nothin’ better!
I do love the smell of Cossacks and cultural trauma in the morning.
I have to think about the fact that my ancestors oppressed Anglo-Saxons for centuries, which makes me some kind of Privileged Shit-Overlord.
Norman or Viking?
Both, in my case. 😀 ( D: )
A lot of white people get that, too, though. My ancestors were Jews who arrived in the early 20th century, for example, and set up in New England. The genocides and subjugation was pretty much done by that point around here.
Yeah and Jews were still treated like shit until WW2. After that it became frowned upon. BECAUSE RACISM IS FUN
I’m sure it’s more fun when you’re on the racist end of it. Like how fighting games are fun, until that one guy puts you in the combo you can’t escape from. I’m sure that guy’s having a blast!
tbh it’s kinda meh. If it’s even noticeable, it’s a slight feeling of outrage that things aren’t how they “should” be, or how they were perceived to be. Usually that feeling of outrage is just enough to provoke enough privilege to get people to shut up and acquiesce with what you thought so that you don’t cause problems. (I guess some people get satisfaction out of that? For me, it’s always been bewildered confusion, which fades to no consequence.) Other times, the racee manages to display enough annoyance that your perceptions are supposed to be their reality that the more intelligent racers understand how dumb they’re being. (assuming that doesn’t backfire and ruin the racee’s day/life.) And in the third case, where reality obstinately ignores you and your perceptions, and you don’t adjust your perceptions as a result, it fuels the rage (and delusional confusion) that many people know white men for.
So yeah, it’s not great. The only good parts are when you (very very) occasionally realize how it benefited you after the fact, and that’s only good if you have no sense of guilt or compassion about it. Which most of us don’t have much of, not because we don’t care, but because there’d be a lot more to regret if we all included things we unknowingly did as well as the things we knowingly did. That’s a distinction we get to make due to some privilege, too, so this is kinda recursive…
/confessions of a modern young white male
I don’t think I understood anything you just said here
You weren’t listening between the lines.
Antisemitism didn’t stop during WW2. All the people today who hate on Blacks hate on Jews in their next paragraph, too.
This. Hell, it didn’t even become unacceptable to be obvious about being anti-semitic in much of culture until around the 70s thanks to a huge amount of Jewish artists pushing back against anti-semitism in the 60s.
But not too long before that the entire US government was able to be vocally anti-semitic with zero backlash from the voters. And quite possibly with the actual approval of the majority of the voters.
I recall transcripts from the McCarty hearings where he would refer to Jewish witnesses as “the Jewish gentleman.” Which while it isn’t quite on the level of dropping the N-word it still serves to constantly remind everyone listening that the person being questioned is a second class citizen, is in some way lesser than a ‘normal’ person. If someone today were to refer to an African American witness as “the black gentleman” or “the African American gentleman”, or a Jewish witness as “the Jewish gentleman” there would be a huge uproar, and rightly so.
OTOH, a lot of Jews ‘pass’ as White nowadays, and we benefit from that privilege — it’s not at all the same as being visibly non-white (for example, with cops).
I have lots of thoughts about whether Jews are White, and whether Whiteness exists.
Also, sad to say, there was still (and is currently) subjugation going on after we landed in the US. (First things that come to mind: internment camps, the rise of the diamond trade, and our current jail system.) We did get murdered a lot this century, but we also partially benefit from recent oppressions. 🙁
So I’m trying to figure out when the Irish started being considered White, because you have the years after the potato famine… And then I can’t find anything that precipitated that stopping. It obviously stopped, but when?
Aw man my gravatar changed to.. Some form of Joe
IIRC it had something to do with events in New England after the Civil War, and the way a lot of Irish folk allied themselves explicitly against black folks, politically.
I have no idea why some of it started applying to non-American Irish folks, though, but in Ireland proper there are still tensions, albeit not like it was during the “let’s actively try to murder everyone in this country” era.
There’s a book called “How The Irish Became White” by… Ignatius Loyola (I think) which covers this exact topic, and its a mix of new white non-English speaking migrants (Italian, Polish, Russian, etc) and the movement of black Americans north, and the Irish became the acceptable face of non-WASP white people.
By David Roediger. Great book.
Basically it just got too hard to tell the difference between the Irish and the general population. Prejudice isn’t any fun if you have to work at it.
Thanks for the explanations.
I had that discussion with my mom recently, and what we settled on (other people’s mileage may vary based on their mindset and experience) was that I have grown up white, my mom is white now but didn’t used to be, and Grandpa had been through enough stuff that he was never white despite the overlap between his life and mine. Mom remembers when he moved to live near us after Grandma died, just looking for a job to keep himself busy, he was terrified that employers would find out he was Russian. He worked for the mob in Chicago after WWII because when you’re a Russian Jewish immigrant, that’s three reasons nobody else will hire you.
Family story (with identity of family member redacted — though she probably wouldn’t care either way). Jewish girl growing up in NYC in the late 40s, after the war ended… but well before Vatican 2. For some odd reason the Bronx is laid out with alternating blocks of East European Jew and Irish Catholic.
Most of the Catholic kids went to the private Catholic school, where (even after WW2) the priests stirred them up against the Jews with the doctrine of blood libel. (This is the doctrine that Jews accepted the blood guilt for Jesus’s crucifixion upon their heads and the heads of all their children.)
This resulted in her being cornered and gang-raped by four boys from the Catholic high school, to punish her for killing Christ. I forget exactly how old she was, but it was in the range of 8-10.
The cops came, took a statement, said no crime had been committed, and left. They were Irish cops.
No, hatred of Jews did not magically vanish once Nazi Germany was defeated.
Every time conservative Catholic cardinals talk about undoing Vatican 2, I vomit in my mouth a little.
I…but…I…the sense, there is none. Not that rape ever makes *sense* or anything, but something about the juxtaposition of such a horrible, horrible thing with “we’re doing it for Christ,” especially with everyone that young…it’s downright terrifying. Humans are strange creatures.
That girl’s ancestors came from Poland or Russia (which it was depended on where the border had been drawn after each war ended). For the local nobles and otherwise-well-to-do, Christmas was a time to get not-quite fall-down drunk and raucous. The “not-quite” was important, because the festivities usually involved partaking in armed mob assaults on the Jewish part of town, or at least assailing and killing a few Jews foolish enough to get caught alone. Most of these celebrations never rose to the level of a pogrom, but it definitely was not a safe day to be a Jew in that corner of the world… even less so than normal. For them Christmas was a day of terror and brutality.
The other side of my family was traditional white Protestant non-nasty Christian and its Christmas traditions involve decorated evergreens, colorfully wrapped presents, carols, and everything everyone else thinks of about Christmas.
My own view of Christmas is… nuanced.
Who said religion needs to make sense?
Sure there are many goodly Christians are out there — large swathes of them, including some whose goodness in large parts arises from their articles of faith, or at least expresses itself through that faith. And it is easy to interpret, with a little cherry-picking, the Jesus of the Bible as preaching kindness and love towards all the world, to the point where it is natural to argue in principle that true Christians would not do this sort of thing.
But neither of those in-principle points change the unfortunate fact of history that “for Christ” was the rallying cry of the Inquisitions, of the Crusades, of much of the genocide of native populations around the world under Western colonialism, of the Nazi Holocaust, and far more besides. Not just that these actions occurred DESPITE the perpetrators’ beliefs, but BECAUSE of them.
Is any of this logical? Of course not. But it doesn’t need to be logical. It does need to make sense. People just need to have faith and not lean on their worldly understanding, and then not making sense ceases to be an obstacle.
It is very, very, very, very terrifying. It is fractal terror. Zoom in to examine any piece of it at any level of detail and that piece is just as terrifying as its neighbors or as the whole. The only thing that I could imagine would make it more terrifying would be if I was a believer, wondering if I was caught up in the faith and thus unable to recognize and identify the evil I was doing in its name, and compelled by promise of heaven and threat of hell… or just threat of ostracism by community, friends, and family… not to ask the deep questions which would be necessary to achieve that recognition.
And yes, there are large swathes of Christianity that aren’t that sort of intellectually restrictive. And there are large swathes that are.
This is where people like Mary and Carol and Toedad come from. However awful they are, in the context of this discussion they’re small potatoes. But the smaller evils they do spring from the same root as the larger evils mentioned above, and so they are the same in kind if not in degree. They come from the same doctrines, the same readiness to faith, the same self-confidence that they have The Truth and that they are on the side of the good, and the same lack of questions.
*But it doesn’t need to be logical. It does NOT need to make sense.
Grr, I work hard to deliver a point and screw it up with a typo.
Well said.
Please do not put Christianity too centrally in the Nazi mix. The churches tended to do nothing against Nazis for a long time, but the Hitlerites actually tried to invoke the Norse Gods – probably because the Christian concept of monogamy didn’t match with their ideas of producing as many blond blue-eyed Arians as possible. They wanted blond blue- eyed women to bear children for any blond and blue-eyed soldier, marriage be damned. Look up Lebensborn.
Also, any god promoting revenge was far more in their line as Christianity (not saying that Christians haven’t done horrible things in the name of Christianity, they did and some still do).
And, as haters do, they just took up any old argument that supported their accusations agains the Jews, no matter if they were contradictory or not.
(kind of reminds me of those people who claim the ‘Bundespublik Deutschland’ is not actually a state and therefore, it’s laws, executive powers and judges have no legitimate power over them – but the same non-existent entity should provide money for them to live on).
Btw: Where would Christianity be if Jesus hadn’t died?
http://www.historytoday.com/robert-carr/nazism-and-christian-heritage
“Gott mit uns”, iron cross, war dead under the Christian cross, heavy usage of Christian symbology in arguments and actions, justifications wrapped heavily in Martin Luther’s writing on jews and his encouragements to violence against them, justifications wrapped in the long standing tradition of blaming jews in towns and purging them throughout the middle ages, modern style Christian oppression of women and sexual minorities including stating that the role of a “good German” woman is at home serving her man like “it says in the Bible” and throwing gay people in concentration camps and burning their libraries, churches alliance for the longest time looking the other way or encouraging the purges, and religious themes and justifications for bigotry woven through Mein Kampf.
It does not reflect on Christianity in general and definitely sprung from a warped form of it that emphasized a more brutal, hateful type of far-right ideology in much the same way as Christian Dominionism or the KKK in the States. And which was reflected by a number of contemporary far-right movements of the time.
But Christian arguments were very central to the rise and justification of the Third Reich and the similar fragments of that have been used to justify religious crimes similar to what Reltzik was talking about. And that is still seen today in anti-semitic religious works and traditions, such as the popularity of “The Passion of the Christ” or in the mythologies of Pre-Millennial Dispensationalist Rapture believing fundies who have all sorts of views of playing Jews like pawns so that God will destroy them all, leaving only a few to be “perfected” into Christianity.
Eh, it’s a big kerfluffle. Yes, Catholicism and the major Protestantisms spent centuries creating the huge well of antisemitism which Hitler tapped into, but it had also spread into society in general and even some of the explicitly secular corners of society by then (including Marx when he wrote on Communism, and boy, that caused its own problems).
Yes, the Nazis had a really weird take on Christianity, including the idea that the “virgin” birth had been because a pure white Aryan from the Germanies in the Legions had knocked Mary up (because Jesus couldn’t actually have been Jewish, apparently) and that the Jew Paul had severely corrupted the original gospel of Jesus.
And his religious views evolved throughout his life, and were influenced by competing with religions for political power, and of course Nazi Germany was more than just Hitler.
No, it’s not reflective on Christianity at large, save to note the kind of monstrosities that can be spawned under that much larger umbrella. But it’s a bit hard to get past his repeated and explicit statements of faith, from his rise to power to his dying day, including repeated statements that he was emulating a Christ that he saw as a warrior and a fighter against the Jews. So say that they got the religion badly wrong if you will — I won’t argue — but it was still done, at least in large part, “for Christ”. The faith was a motivator, not a deterrent, and the Nazis were by and large convinced of their “Gott Mit Uns” slogan.
And of course everyone (save the Communist Russians) who fought against Nazi Germany was convinced that God was on THEIR side as well.
As for where Christianity would be if Jesus hadn’t died? I’m not entirely convinced that there was even a historical Jesus… but if he hadn’t died, he would presumably still be around giving some sort of preaching or another. Maybe he would have tried to retire after the first few centuries of not dying, but I don’t know if his followers would have let him.
Make sense? That’s the whole point. When a person can justify to themselves, no matter how twisted that justification seems to the average person or even another person who shares their same faith, that their acts are endorsed by God or a god, then they absolve themselves of any wrong doing.
Any act, no matter how heinous, is justified because they can point to some sentence in their holy book and claim that some deity says this is an ok thing to do. Kill a Jew, rape a child, murder a doctor. And forget about all the parts which say things like turn the other cheek or act only if you yourself are sinless or love your enemy, those are conveniently forgotten in the fixation on those parts which say stone people to death or killing is justified or owning slaves is proper as long as your treatment of them is codified in the holy book, etc.
Humanity will never escape our primitive natures until we eradicate the pestilence which is religion. Because none of the major religions are excluded from having their holy book filled with horrors and crimes which are entirely endorsed by their deity.
And this is why humanity will never
Sadly, that wouldn’t even solve things. In the modern day, we’ve seen all manner of awful justified areligiously by atheist folk under the vague justifications of biological determinism, fake ideas about what cavepeople were like, and all manner of nonsense.
The rot is in us and the only way out is through, no shortcuts.
Sadly, the nonsensicalness has continued in some parts of the country. In the mid-1980s, as a young Jewish girl living in a rural part of a state generally known for its Jewish population (New York), I was bullied and picked on for being Jewish, specifically because of Catholic blood libel.
I wasn’t raped, thankfully, but I was yelled at and told that I was to blame for Christ’s death because ‘the Jews killed Jesus’. And that that sin falls upon me as a Jew. My mother, growing up in the 1950s and 60s, went through much the same, except that she was in NYC proper.
Crap (actually, a stronger expletive, but I’m not sure if Willis is cool with that sort of thing), that sucks for your anonymous female relative, Reltzik.
…Learning that some people actually take that “blood libel” crap seriously was so weird. My response to that “Pontius Pilate washes his hands” nonsense as a kid was “yeah, right. Hygiene doesn’t get you out of deicide, nitwit.”
Technicality quibbling: that’s not the doctrine of blood libel, it’s the doctrine of Jewish Deicide. I wouldn’t break into someone else’s family history, except the Blood Libel is also a thing and much, much worse than that.
The Blood Libel is essentially the story that some disfavored group kills and eats babies. (The original anti-Semitic Blood Libel gets into more details that I won’t repeat here, but I’m sure Wikipedia or somewhere else has those details if you want to look for it) It was applied to Jews in the 12th century originally, but you see variations used in anti-Catholic rhetoric in the nineteenth century, and you can see echoes in the Satanic Panics of the 1980s. (Which somewhat feeds into the rumors that fly through anti-abortion groups about what happens at abortion clinics) Contrast with the doctrine of Jewish Deicide, which the Romans made heretical at Vatican II, and which never caught on outside the Roman Catholic church the way the Blood Libel did. (There were members of the Russian Duma as recently as ten years ago repeating variations of the Blood Libel as reasons to ban all Jewish organizations)
My bad, you’re right, I had the terms confused. Correction accepted, and thanks for pointing it out.
Though it should be noted that the doctrine of Jewish Deicide DID catch on outside of Catholicism. Eastern Orthodoxy included it explicitly in its liturgy (which even Catholicism did not — it was more a common belief and a pervasively popular favorite than an official, papally-endorsed doctrine), and Martin Luther explicitly stated that Christians were at fault for not avenging themselves upon the Jews for having spilled the Lord’s blood.
You are of course correct, and I should have specified deicide rather than blood libel. Thanks for the correction.
Thanks for the clarification. While I knew that Jews were among the many groups who have been accused of stealing and/or murdering children over the ages, I thought “blood libel” included that “they killed Jesus” bullshit.
Holy fuck that is awful on every single level. D: >:-(
Also why the fuck do Christians still seem to be blaming the Jews instead of the Romans (or, you know, like, God?!) for Jesus’s death? It wasn’t the Jews who crucified him!!
The liturgical argument is based on a specific incident. Each year, coinciding with a specific Jewish holiday, the Roman governor of the region would offer to the Jewish populace the opportunity to pardon one convicted Jewish criminal. Pilate had been impressed with Jesus and wanted to pardon him, but the choice was up to the Jews. However, the Sadducees and Pharisees (two of the powerful religio-political bodies within the Jewish population – the ‘whited sepulchers’ and money-changers in the temple) were afraid of Jesus as a rabble-rouser and generally someone likely to go on to continue to make life difficult for them in particular and Jews in general, so they worked up the local populace (possibly with bribes) to instead demand that the criminal Barabbas be pardoned instead.
As a result, the general trend in Christianity for millennia has been to say ‘see, the Romans didn’t WANT to kill Christ, they had no choice because of those Jews’. Viewed through a social and political lens (as opposed to with religious conviction) the whole story is pretty fascinating. Just sickening when we also follow through the centuries of warfare and genocide and general abuse and oppression of many, many groups that followed.
My understanding (and I’m far from an expert on this) is that the early church’s attitude evolved over time. Originally they were pretty friendly towards the Jews, trying to reach out to them and give them the good news. As they succeeded in converting anyone prone to conversion, and as other Jews remained unconvinced of their articles in faith, and continued to regard Christianity as heretical and blasphemous, relationships soured and a harsher interpretation of Jews moved to the fore in the later gospels.
It’s a very similar evolution to the attitudes of Mohamed towards Christians and Jews during his life, or Martin Luther’s attitude towards Jews at the birth of Protestantism.
It’s also suspected there was something of a political angle: As the religion spread into gentiles in the Roman Empire, it was safer to blame Jews than Roman authorities for the death of Jesus.
Just an fyi, Christian antisemitism’s evolution doesn’t really have a whole lot of similarities with Christian treatment in muslim areas.
I mean, there’s a reason that, among other things, the reconquista actually worked as a thing that was actually useful. It’s because there were still a number of Christians living in the muslim areas of Spain. The reverse would not really hold true post-reconquista. Of the abrahamic religions, Christianity has had a /far/ kinder relationship with genocide than its neighbors.
Though to be fair a number of muslims also converted, since ‘convert or die’ is a hell of a pitch.
I always thought any references to christianity by the Nazis was just a tactical thing which had nothing to do with their actual religious views.
But I cannot say I really studied the subject. Maybe my history classes were slightly skewed and left out any line of argument that didn’t revolve around bullshit race theories.
I never understood how any Christian could have wanted Jesus not do be killed (as without that, everyone would have forgotten about him ages ago, the story of his sacrifice is elemental for the existence of Christianity). There is no sense at all to persecute anyone for it.
But, as Cerberus mentioned above, the thing is that sense doesn’t seem to matter at all for it.
Speaking as a Christian, I tend to think the importance of Jesus isn’t his blood sacrifice but his ministry.
Lots of references to Christianity by modern Christians have nothing to do with their actual religious views.
To be fair, pretty much everyone’s ancestors did SOMETHING awful at some point. We should definitely do everything we can to improve people’s lives in the here and now, but feeling guilty for something we had no say in seems kind of useless to me…
Yeah, but trying to convince most people of this (especially on the internet) is like trying to sit down on a bag of nails.
No matter what angle you approach it from, it’s not gonna end well for you.
Well, an important point to this is that “white people should feel guilty for historical oppression” isn’t actually the point of talking about historical oppression.
Instead the point is often that those historic systems of oppression’s shadows still dramatically affect human lives today either because the justifications of that old oppression are still around and its possibility to be repeated even if at a lesser level are omnipresent (e.g. the creation of a permanent underclass and selective enforcement of drug laws and the like in order to keep black Americans from becoming fully equal in society due to still being viewed by some as escaped slaves, the way women who succeed or are sexually confident are viewed as evil in some manner in a direct reflection of what drove the witch hunts, and so on).
Not to mention that there is a thing where bigots who’ve recently lost a conflict try and erase the conflict from history, claiming that oppression that happened to people who were alive then didn’t happen in order to claim that the rights struggle was about special rights and thus its okay to hate them (racists erasing the anti-communist panic about MLK and pretending that he faced no backlash from most Americans, homophobes currently trying to erase their actions during the AIDS crisis where they openly cheered the disease for “getting rid of sinners”, anti-semites trying to pretend the Holocaust wasn’t as bad or didn’t happen or wasn’t steeped in a cultural mythology of conspiracy theories that still live on today, and so on).
Not to mention literal erasing of history to make older “heroes” (who happen to be white and male) look better (see the erasure of the genocide campaign against Native Americans or the real actions of our slave-owning Founding Fathers).
It’s not about guilt, it’s about giving shape and context to actions and current oppression, but dominant groups often treat people being aware of bad histories like some weird call to publicly beat their breast and wail in order to justify feeling negatively towards the very concept of awareness and acknowledgement of history that has occurred and the impacts it still has on things today including unconscious biases that make people defensive about learning things they “don’t have to learn” due to their privilege.
Because it’s not about “feeling guilty”. That’s not the point. It’s never been the point.
It’s about doing what we can to improve people’s lives in the here and now, but that requires realizing how we got to the here and now. To take just black Americans, if you’re just thinking about slavery as the awful thing, it’s easy to think “that was 150 years ago, shouldn’t they be over it by now?”
Of course, if you realize that Jim Crow kept blacks as legally oppressed citizens for another 100 years, it’s a little harder to think it should have all worked out by now.
And when you look at white flight racial divisions in education and the racialized drug war and so many other trends from the last half of the twentieth century, you realize that it’s not just ancestors, but parents. And us.
Even today, it’s still going on. In the housing bubble years, blacks were steered into subprime mortgages at much higher rates than whites with equivalent incomes – thus, they lost much more in the 2008 financial crisis. There are plenty of studies showing race strongly affects hiring. This is us. Even if we’re not contributing, we’re benefiting. I don’t have to be racist to get hired instead of the equally qualified (or even slightly more qualified) black guy. I don’t even have to realize the manager was. Sometimes, even the manager doesn’t realize it – I just seemed like a better fit somehow.
I didn’t do anything. I don’t have anything to feel guilty about. But don’t whitewash it either. I can’t pretend I haven’t got breaks that others wouldn’t have, just because I’m a straight white guy.
And try to watch out for my own prejudices. I grew up in late 20th century America. You don’t do that without picking prejudices and stereotypes about others. How can you avoid it? You’re soaking in them. All you can do it is try to be aware of yours and shut them down when they pop up.
And that’s the problem I have with the concept. Privilege is a thing. But the terminology leads to the idea that you should lower yourself. But that’s WRONG.
The solution to privilege is to acknowledge it exists, and then to try to raise everyone else up. Lowering yourself down doesn’t fix a thing. It just makes you miserable, and leaves the unprivileged exactly where they are.
Imagine you are at a job, and you get promoted. Later on, you realize that there was this other guy who was much more deserving than you. What do you do? Do you quit? Or do you work to make sure that the more deserving guy gets his reward, too?
Every privilege I have as a straight white male is a privilege I want to extend to everyone else. All my privileges are that I get treated like a full human being in ways others don’t. And I want them to be elevated to the same place I am, not me lowered down to being discriminated against.
Except, the thing is that raising everyone up is the point of conversations of privilege. However, people with that privilege are often used to all-or-nothing thinking that presumes that other people getting things mean things are being taken away from them, because especially in very capitalist countries, that’s what winning is framed as (one person beating the others who suffer or are hamstrung enough to allow that person to win over them).
But when the marginalized gain its usually better for everyone. Like, gender roles relaxing is a great example. When women are allowed to have more broad dreams and goals for their lives and are allowed more freedom outside a narrow band of demonized femininity, it allows men as well a reduction of restrictions and backlash for traditionally “feminine” behavior, which is less stressful for everyone and allows everyone to live more authentically.
But, the image of discussions about that have always been fraught with panic that raising women up inherently means tearing men down even if that’s not what women have been saying in discussions of privilege:
http://historyoffeminism.com/anti-suffragette-postcards-posters-cartoons/
And that’s kinda on the dominant group members, because they are the ones insisting on that narrow interpretation because it allows them to better demonize this inequality.
But I can understand why that always happens and why it feels that way to dominant group members when discussions of privilege come up. And that reason is that people are used to an uneven playing field, so it doesn’t feel at first like the marginalized being raised up, it just feels like “those people” getting “special rights” and so in complaining about it, “those people” have to point out the inherent inequalities which makes the dominant group members feel guilty and thus blame the marginalized for making them feel bad as if that was the entire point.
The other half of it is that sometimes the dominant groups do lose “rights” in that some “privileges” cannot be maintained, like the “right” to control another group’s lives or the “right” to dominate another group or sometimes the “right” to literally own people like slaves or control their decisions over their own bodies and lives.
And to the dominant group members, this feels like a genuine loss of a right, a way that they have been hamstrung to be like those discriminated rather than the necessary excision of a “right” that never was and should never have been.
Sadly, those impressions by the dominant group members make it hard to point out the shape of oppressions and that’s just how it is. There’s no real style or way of being gentle enough or soft enough to not trigger this defensiveness and feeling of loss among the dominant group members, because they view things like ignorance of how bad oppression is or right to be at the same level above another group of people as “just how the world works” and so every attempt to point at that and bring people up just feels like a savage attack to them.
“Imagine you are at a job, and you get promoted. Later on, you realize that there was this other guy who was much more deserving than you. What do you do? Do you quit? Or do you work to make sure that the more deserving guy gets his reward, too?”
That is a very tough scenario, because no one wants to lose their job and their income, while your second option of “work to make sure that the more deserving guy gets his reward, too” is never going to actually make up for the injustice you are perceiving in the first place. Even if you manage to get the other guy promoted, it’s on the books that he held his current position for X number of days, which is a permanent record of how long it took him to ‘earn’ promotion. There is no win.
What I do, at every position I have held for the past 15+ years, is to educate the people under me as best I can. Train them to do my job and each others jobs so that I can move on to something else and one of them can move up. I don’t like being stuck in a position because I’m the only one who can do it, and I like to move around and keep things fresh, so for me this is a win-win. And looking back at my past history I can see that it wasn’t always ‘the white guy’ who advanced over their non-white or non-male colleagues, so I can sleep well at night knowing that merit had a larger say in promotions amongst people I was responsible for than did gender or race or religion or political leanings or whatever. And while people really should not be sharing their religion (or lack thereof) or political leanings at the office, it does happen on occasion.
The interesting thing on that particular example is that the answer is to be aware that that exists and to remain aware of it especially when it comes time to hand down promotions yourself or be on hiring committees or so on. Note the unconscious bias and double check yourself, especially in close “gut” decisions. To try and resist it where you can and speak up about it in conversations with peers about how its a thing, so that others can be aware as well.
Quitting a job helps no one, it doesn’t end hiring biases or make it more likely for that other more qualified person to fill the space (because it’ll just go to someone who shares your dominant traits) and is just a pointless sacrifice in order to make a show of sacrificing and showing your “goodness” through martyrdom.
And that’s what sucks about dealing with these unconscious -isms in societies like America. We’re all hopped up on all these narratives about fixing grand sweeping problems with single moments of heroic sacrifice, thanks to cultural touchstones like “Jesus on the cross”, but what solves these sorts of things is actually long periods of many people all doing small consistent actions that require lots of introspection, focus, and humility.
And for a lot of us raised on the “heroic sacrifice” mythology, that’s a much bigger ask than asking us to forego a promotion or the like.
All of this. This rot is in us. It affects us, it drives our decisions in ways we can’t detect unless we are very introspective and it’s worth the effort to listen, to pay attention to ourselves, to keep a perspective on a skewed vision of reality and seek out the truth, because it makes us better people and it’s necessary for those sorts of things to stop so that the next generation has less baggage they’ve inherited, and an easier time of it.
Think I read somewhere, that every -every- race/culture has had slaves at some point in their history.
It’s just the “have to sit on somebody’s face gene” that every person on earth has no matter where they are from.
Fun History Notes:
After the “fall” of the Roman Empire: The Catholic Church phased slavery out of European economics pretty quickly… And then the Renaissance happened.
For a long time people from Britain were slaves in the Byzantine Empire, some religious figure (can’t remember who) stated they “looked like angels.” And that made people stop doing that. (And probably also started the trend of blond haired blue eyed white Angels)
Vikings kidnapped Scotch and Irish for slave labor for some reason, and eschewed going to Africa for slaves, presumably because that would have been a bit less profitable. This has caused race relations in the area to be… Weird.
Other “fun” history notes:
Louisiana had the best treatment of slaves in America, the closest to Roman slavery… Considering the fact that it was still justified with Christianity (somehow), that’s not much of an award. “Fair for its day” is still horrifying by modern standards in most cases.
Haiti is the only successful slave revolt in history, shortly after it was over, forced labor was instated.
Everyone is pitted against one another over superficial differences because peace is dangerous and allows people to start actually thinking.
Surely feudal serfdom is a form of chattel slavery? The Church was fine with that and indentured servitude, another form.
Serfdom is very different from chattel slavery. The central quality of chattel slavery is that the slaves are treated as chattel, that is, a commodity that can be bought and sold. Serfdom is usually a particular form of debt bondage under feudalism and manoralism where the serf pledges servitude in return for land. Unlike chattel slaves, serfs (in the usual sense of the word) could not be traded like a commodity. In modern terms, a serf is a contract worker, and their contract binds them to a specific person (the Manor Lord) and a specific place.
In addition, some of the earlier serfs did in fact own property, and sometimes initially became serfs because their lord offered them more. Early on it was all about owning the labor. Richard Southern’s “The Making of the Middle Ages” is a really good source for further information.
Serfs, to be fair, came as part of the package, if the land they were on was sold, but that’s a different then than their being chattel.
Serfdom kinda sucked, but it sucked in a different way than chattel slavery.
They had job security, at least.
Sure, so long as there wasn’t a famine or drought or anything that would keep them from feeding themselves, since they were legally bound to that particular patch of dirt.
And regardless of famine or drought or any such, they still had to keep paying their owners.
Thank you for giving examples of how serfdom sucks in a completely different way than how chattel slavery sucks.
Eh, it was much closer to actual slavery in many cases throughout history. Not all serfs actually owned their land, many only worked it for the owner, who might have been called ‘Lord’ or some other title but ‘master’ works just as well.
Many serfs were charged or taxed at such a rate that they could never escape the cycle. And for many leaving the land to seek a better life elsewhere was a crime, often punishable by death. The lord also had the power of low justice, and the serf had no appeal. So any crime against them by the lord was by definition legal, and any injustice they protested was by definition a lost cause.
So really, not different in many ways from actual chattel slavery.
I made no claim about whether serfdom was worse or better than chattel slavery. I merely noted that serfdom was not chattel slavery, with an explanation of some of the particulars of serfdom to highlight the differences.
By UN definitions, most forms of serfdom were probably slavery. But not all slavery is chattel slavery.
You’re comparing apples and washing machines.
Do those two things have any traits in common?
The Church’s concern was preventing slavery of Christians. Pagans remained fair game well into the middle ages.
“Looked like angels” sounds like a reference to Pope Gregory I’s supposed remarks, attributed to him by Bede, on encountering English slaves in Rome. The result was Augustine’s mission, the aim of which was extending the reach of Christianity within Britain; nothing to do with eliminating slavery.
The Church gets a lot of flack but for all the corruption, power-trading, Crusades, and suppression of alternative faiths–they actually did quite a bit to preserve prior learning, negotiate peace, and prevent the absolute worst of abuses. Given how bad things were, it’s a testament to how awful people can get that “the fact the bride actually has to consent to the wedding” is a major-major concession to decency.
While true, the type of slavery involved was very different. It was a type that you could even eventually work your way out of. At least, that was what the Bible describes–actual practice may have been different.
I understand people disliking Paul, but his letter to Philemon is really interesting. He basically says “Tell your master that you will stay his slave, but he must treat you like you aren’t a slave, but as brother. If he mistreats you again, I will come back, and he won’t like it.” It sounds a whole lot like serfdom or even employee-employer relations.
Like it or not, Paul was actually rather progressive for his day. Not as progressive as Jesus, but still pretty progressive. The problem arises when you transplant his beliefs to modern day.
TBH My notes from that day in History of Christianity were mostly doodles of wizards, holy symbols for my fantasy world, and a sweet laser beam. I forgot to put the whole “IIRC” disclaimer in front of it. My apologies.
As long as they tell me that they love me they can sit on my face all they want. Life CAN be fine, you know.
I love to hear you moralize.
If you do enough genealogy, your ancestors oppressed each other. I’m French catholic / protestant, Irish catholic / northern Irish protestant, pilgrim / scotch Irish / catholic. All chains of oppression. Jefferson kept relatives as slaves and he was far from alone in that.
We view this as a feature of Christianity because that is the culture we live in. All religion gets used to justify oppression. Invading Buddhist armies? History has them. Racist Hindus? Available right now. Atheism prevent this? Not in Russia, China or Cambodia. Want to retreat to nature religions and paganism? Like the peace loving Romans?
In most religions, the peaceful is more authentic but not the most common. People, they’re why we can’t have nice things.
Slavery is never a good thing, but various slave trades have had varying levels of horrificness.
The US trade of African slaves was particularly nasty on many different levels.
Oh geez, the number of people who feel/think this way without actually describing it this way…
Good job, Walky. Thanks for joining the party.
even if the growth is slower at least it happens.
“This party sucks. Why’d we even come here? I mean the only music is that lone violin playing.”
“and the only snack is the bitter truth!”
“walky, jason is here to talk about your grades and bang your sister.”
“too bitter!”
So now I’m curious what’s in Dorothy’s box v. what’s in Sal’s box.
Dorothy’s box: Kegel balls.
Sal’s box: A 25 dollar Applebees gift card.
They both contain the same thing, the launch keys to a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile system at Minot AFB in Minot, North Dakota.
[Trying very hard not to make obvious crude jokes.]
I failed so hard at that tonight. Made about half a dozen posts that had sexual content in fifteen minutes.
I want to know what’s in all of them.
OPEN DA BOXES!
Prediction (just to be perversely contrary): Walky gets a bunch of comics and toys he’d left at home. Sal throws her gift into the trash unopened. Four years later (our time), Linda and Charles show up, the family goes to a swanky place for dinner, and Linda asks why Sal isn’t wearing the family jewelry that has for six generations been passed down from mother to daughter once the daughter is full-grown. Sal answers. Linda is disappoint.
That would be hilarious. I mean, I think there’s a better chance that any potential heirloom jewelry is in Billie’s box, but that would be absolutely hilarious. I like the way you think.
One box kills all humans.
The other box kills all Zygons.
They’ve miniaturized Cerebro?
That was so far off it hurt.
They’ve crossed the fandoms! Total protonic reversal!
Time Lords and mutants living together! Mass hysteria!
Complaining about free gifts is not cool Walky!
He’s not complaining about the gift. He’s complaining about the unfairness towards his sister. It’s cool.
But what is in the box? Could be an expensive collectible which her mom has been getting her for years? *fingers crossed*
Or a treasure map leading to ancient Aztec gold!
Or it could be dog poops.
Or a treasure map cataloging the location of all the dog poops.
Which I can honestly imagine would be something Walky’d want.
The skies the poopy limit.
Oh no, if tv has taught me anything, it’s that that shit is cursed yo.
BURIED IN MOUNT RUSHMORE!
… No, wait, that was Inca gold.
…. Because the Aztecs were a couple thousand miles away, and Aztec gold in Mount Rushmore would have been as stupid as it being more gold than has ever been mined in human history, and almost stupider than someone putting a roughly 18″x12″x6″ brick of pure gold in their knapsack and walking out with it on their back, but somehow MORE stupid than it being Incas, and a leading archaeologist specializing in the Incas never once either calling it stupid or explaining why it wasn’t stupid.
… that was a stupid movie.
Yeah… but… Who would look for aztec gold in Mount Rushmore? Answer: no one, which is why it is the perfect place to hide aztec gold. Just like how they hide German diamonds in Mt. Lo’ihi.
Wait, that’s the part that bothered you with that movie? When the antagonist’s entire plan to get Nicholas Cage looking for the treasure in the first place was so… unnecessary? All the antagonist had to do was contact the sidekick (most likely through his publisher), explain that he, too, has a familial historical mystery to solve that’s giving him trouble, and ask for help. Sidekick goes to Cage, says “hey, I know you’re still upset over your breakup, but here’s something to get your mind off things,” and off they go. There was no need for the antagonist to frame Cage’s great-great-grandpa as an accomplice to the Lincoln assassination. Not that anyone would care if he was, anyway; an ancestor that did business with the Nazis didn’t keep either George Bush from becoming president of the US, after all.
…Yeah, that was a stupid movie. It wouldn’t have bothered me so much if someone had yelled “Why didn’t you just ask for our help?” though.
Oh, that’s not what bothered me most about that movie. It’s just what bothered me about the gold in that movie. I’d have a hard time saying what bothered me most about that movie because anything I might point to would have something worse competing with it.
That’s fair.
given her history, how their parents have treated them(as referenced by both walky AND sal), and the general appearances of how that family is completely fucking broken?
what the hell do you think?
Bracelet charms… highly inappropriate bracelet charms… Like weiners or bricks.
Who am I kidding… it’s most likely a box full of glitter rigged to go everywhere when the box is opened.
Everywhere…
…. like, into the carpet?
FOREVER?
It’s called Craft Herpes for a reason, bro.
Well, that glue will hold it there….
Probably a photo album of Walky.
A retrospective of his acting career? Including the video-which-must-not-be-named?
Especially while driving, Billie!
…:’D
Stupid brain! Stop pulling Walky down offa his cloud!
Hey, MacCloud, get offa my ewe!
Don’t hang around ’cause two’s a crowd!
So, does this make Sal Hades?
“My brother, Mr. Hey-You-Get-Of-My-Cloud?”
It makes Sal Jumpin’ Jack Flash.
–It’s a GAS.
Walky is evolving!
What is his Ultimate Form?
One where he understands how to do proper ally-ing.
And also gives Dorothy the most fantastic orgasms with his tongue.
+1!
Ha! All the internets, they are yours.
Emporer: Do you read Menage a 3? You want him to get swirly powers?
I do read that comic, and the famous Swirly-Go-Round is exactly what I think Walky’s ultimate form will be able to master. In a climactic showdown*, Walky’s will start hovering in the air, glowing and slowly spinning as magical orbs will settle on his tongue.
When he then lands again, he will then immediately tell Sal that he will stand with her any time against Linda, letting her take the lead, but support her arguments whenever needed.
And then he’ll tell Dorothy how exactly she can become president, and when she responds by dragging him into her room…. It’s Swirly-Go-Round time!
*pun so very much intended
A mighty multiverse-traveling Cheese, with godlike powers.
“Heh. I’m the Cheese, and I can kick your butt.”
Press B repeatedly to stop evolving.
Yeah, he’s cute in this form.
Congratulations, Tenchan, you made me actually hear the in-game evolution music and sound effects. Well done.
Watch, he’s gonna be even more guilt tripped seeing that the stuff in her box isn’t even remotely as good as the stuff in his.
It’s just a bundle of sticks tied together with a shoe lace.
“She only got a 10-piece box of McNuggets! She should have gotten at least a 20-piece box!”
SHE DIDN’T EVEN GET HONEY MUSTARD. I GOT 3 DIFFERENT SAUCES.
McDonald’s doesn’t have just plain honey for dipping anymore. 🙁
They used to have straight up honey? That must have been a regional thing.
I grew up with it in the Pacific Northwest and when I was told “we haven’t had that in years” I was in New England.
I’ve been a vegetarian for almost 15 years, and this still makes me feel sad, like a little bit of my childhood just died.
And now I have the ending from Se7en stuck in my head.
WHAT’S IN THE BOOOX?
….at least Dorothy’s is the same size as Sal’s, and not Walky’s? >_>
This only conferms my theory. It has been momcided. “This Dorothy person is just a phase. He WILL marry Jennifer.”
I’m upset too. How come Dorothy got the same size box as Sal!? She’s WHIIIIIIIIIITE.
Anti- feminism?
Then why is Jennifer’s so big!? Just cuz she goes by Billie doesn’t make her a boy!
Had to be bigger to fit the name on it.
No, Billie’s box is the same size as Walky’s.
[George Carlin]It’s a mystery![/George Carlin]
thanks, you inadvertently put this back in my head
She is a Atheist
Everyone knows that doesn’t matter. She still has a free ticket into White Heaven.
Ah, happy Boondocks flashbacks.
Those are the fondest of flashbacks.
Can I just say that, as a white male, I really hope that is not a thing. I really like Aaron McGrudger and Chris Rock, and they wouldn’t be in white heaven.
Agreed. After all, eternal boredom sounds pretty hellish to me.
I cannot for the life of me where I encountered it but I vividly remember some book noting that a “heaven” full of like minded white Christians would be the most brilliantly designed hell ever as they would turn on each other with their pettiness and make each other’s eternities as miserable as possible.
I believe South Park did this. They answered the ‘who goes to heaven?’ question with ‘Mormons’, and then Satan got God to send Saadam there.
Dorothy gets the same size box as Sal because Linda knows as much about Dorothy as she does about Sal.
Dorothy isn’t family. She gets a box as Walky’s adjunct.
So did Sal, if you think about it. She’s just a different kind of adjunct.
So trade boxes with her?
It would be super sweet of Walky to share his stuff with Sal.
It would be. I feel like Sal probably wouldn’t accept it though.
Of course not, she’s too proud for that, but it would be a nice sentiment.
Interesting, I hadn’t realized that Billie must’ve been uncomfortably aware of the situation as the surrogate daughter, but now it seems obvious.
But what’s in the boxes??
Dildos! Everyone got one! Walky is now very confused as to why his box was so big…
As I said above, Dorothy’s getting kegel balls.
What’d be creepy is if there were one for Ruth.
Go Leafs
Or Mary.
Or Dean Mchenry.
Jinx!
Matching heart half lockets for the dean and the congresswoman.
Or Dean McHenry.
or a pair of shoes for Sierra… 😛
How dare Linda in that hypothetical situation!
Or Sarah.
“Wait. She’s not Walky’s sister? But she’s… I’m so confused. You mean it was the OTHER one the whole time?”
“Oh Linda, come on. That’s ridiculous. You know that I’m Charles.”
“… you mean I left Dean McHenry for someone who WASN’T Barack Obama? My life is a LIE! Come on, Sal, we’re leaving!”
“That’s Sierra.”
“Shut up!”
You know, I really hope it is that they’re all about the same once they’re opened – it seems weirdly overt of Linda to do what these strips are suggesting, sending Billie a huge package and Sal one the same size as Dorothy’s. If nothing else, I’d imagine she wouldn’t want to be seen as shortchanging Dorothy.
A whole lot of people use gift giving to show how much they love/approve of others… and demand to be shown the same or higher level of regard with gifts received. It’s a really super fun form of manipulation and abuse, in part because when people try to talk about how they’re punished by being given less/shittier gifts they’re told not to complain because gifts. Giving Sal a small not great package seems really in line with how their mom acts toward her.
This. And if Sal were to point it out, even if the gift sizes were due to unconscious rather than conscious bias, Linda would probably chew her out for being “ungrateful”, after all, this was a kind free gift and that just goes to show how much of a “troubled” daughter she’s always been.
And it’s clear in this comic and her interaction with her parents at Family Weekend that she’s just got no fight left in her for her parent’s affection. Not enough to really stand up for herself or push back against the little digs and snubs.
To be fair, she doesn’t owe them any fight – they didn’t fight for her, they sent her to a detention boarding school to make someone else deal with her.
I think she’s just highlighting the fact that she puts Walky and Billie on the same plane, one that doesn’t include her own daughter. So Sal get the same size gift as a casual friend.
They’ve met Dorothy all of once and Dorothy’s only been dating Walky for a few weeks, so that sounds like weird logic to me.
Ok, sure, they only met Dorothy the one time. But remember, Dorothy is a girl. A girl who dresses him, even. Judging from his parents’ response to this revelation, they didn’t expect him to ever find one. This makes Dorothy special enough for Linda to get her a present, but since she’s only met Dorothy once, Linda got her something small and probably generic. It’s probably a battery-operated LED candle or a nice-smelling thing for her room or something like that.
Yes. “We’re thinking of you, because we want you to stay in our family (please, to direct Walky’s life for him when we can’t). Please, accept this token of our welcome.”
See I get that, but I don’t get how size comes into it. It’s a nice extra gesture but there’s no reason giving a newish person less than your kids and practically-kid would be shortchanging.
(By the same logic, feeling that Sal gets shortchanged makes sense, since she should be as family as Walky or you know, at least Billie)
I don’t think anyone actually thinks Linda shortchanged Dorothy. I think whoever made the comment about Dorothy getting shortchanged (sorry, your name got cut off in my browser, whoever you are) was making a joke about Linda “insulting” Dorothy by assigning her the same value as Sal.
It does seem weird how much they’re judging by the size of the boxes.
Hypothesis: Only having one child: A necessary but not sufficient criteria for being a good parent in DoA?
Mm, Becky, Amber, Ethan. So disproven?
“necessary but not sufficient”
“necessary but not sufficient”
“necessary but not sufficient“
Mah bad! Okay maybe you’re onto something.
Hence the addition of “not sufficient”.
And Danny.
Danny has an older brother. He’s in the military.
amber has a half brother… don’t tell me you forgot about Faz
He’s not Blaine’s stepchild?
He is Blaine’s stepchild.
He has no blood relation to any of the O’Malley’s though. (He’s Amber’s stepbrother, not half brother in this universe)
Replied to the wrong person. My bad.
Sarah has a sister (whom we haven’t yet seen in Dumbing of Age), and we have no reason to believe her parents are bad.
I don’t think we’ve ever met Mr. and Mrs. DeSanto (Robin, Roz, Riley, and possibly more undisclosed sisters, as needed to forward the plot).
We met her in Shortpacked and she was pretty nice.
Was she? I can only remember Robin’s origin story and it ended with her running away from home at a young age, but I can’t recall the specifics of why.
In that universe it was because her mom and her dad were always arguing about the dad’s infidelities and Robin was also feeling stifled by the number of siblings she was sharing the house with.
There was a touching moment in the end of the series, where she has a nice heart-to-heart with Leslie, adopting her fully into the family.
Nitpick: There’s no indication that Ruth and Howard’s parents were bad parents.
Probably not in this verse, but Walkyverse!Ruthdad cheated on his wife a whole lot.
That was the exception I was thinking about but it may be as simple as there being a “MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!!!” exception, otherwise known as the Batman Corollary.
Beyond that, Captain Button might be right for now (jury is still out on Hank).
The person with a current and recent significant hand in raising Howard and Ruth respectively is shown as mean and maybe abusive, so I think they count.
This is mostly at Euki
Hank is decent. Not perfect, but unlike his wife, he knows this and is actively working on getting better.
Is it a thing at this school, like, you order different-sized boxes of cookies, so that all their boxes are the same contents except that Sal has less? Or would these be different gifts that Mrs. Walkerton picked out for each kid?
My guess is everybody got the same basic stuff, but Walky and Billie got extra things Linda saw and thought they would like. Nothing extra for Sal because she doesn’t know her daughter well enough for her to see something and go “Ooh, this can go in with the care packages I’m sending.”
Yeah, or extras. Like, they all get a batch of cookies, but the rest also get some other snacks and little gifts and what not.
Ain’t that the truth, Walky. Becoming aware of an injustice for the first time feels like the rug is being pulled out from under you. And once you’ve noticed your first injustice you keep noticing them everywhere, over and over. Congratulatons, you’ve now become a socially aware human being in this world, but now everything sucks.
Interesting juxtaposition of your comment with your icon.
lol I always get replies like these. The Mary curse. It’s not like I chose my icon? I could change it, but eh, I don’t really care enough. I personally don’t even really pay attention to people’s icons in relation to what they post.
Just as well, I keep confusing all the the other Roz icon people with Cerberus.
Cerberus is the best Roz, though.
I want in on this Cerberus fanclub meeting 😉
Just imagine the momentary confusion the next time the avatars get updated and we all get shuffled around again.
Good thing I got my own gravatar then.
Yay! I get a new gravatar! Cerebus, you can have mine.
… yes, I AM too lazy to uploaded a custom one, thank you for asking.
That’s gonna be weird. And now for some reason I can’t help but imagine that next time Cerberus will get Mike next time for a lot of irony.
I’m glad I’m not the only one.
Yeah, me, too.
It’s especially weird when one of them is replying to her.
I know what you mean.
I became more aware of the events in world during 6th grade, before it I was like “Oh this world is such a cool place!”(Man, was I stupid)
http://i.imgur.com/RmgS7CY.png
I bet they’re not even ribbed.
They are, but oddly enough for “HIS” pleasure.
Speaking of which, is there anyone who can tell me whether or not it makes a particular difference if your condom-using, penis-having partner puts on a ribbed condom instead of a normal one?
I can’t tell.
Thanks for telling. May your next encounter with a condom-wearing penis be a good one!
(Oh, and I am not trying to imply that penetration is the main/only good thing about sex. Faaaaaar from it. It was simply that once I got the idea of a “condom-wearing penis” as a separate entity, I just somehow had to use it. Pure silliness, in other words. )
Don’t be so nervous, pal. All you implied is that their NEXT encounter with a condom-wearing penis be a good one. Like if you said you hope my next encounter with a burger be a pleasant one. It might be years before my next burger. I might even die not ever eating another burger. But assuming I do ever eat a burger again, the next one certainly will be good!
But your next encounter with a bare penis only be AVERAGE AT BEST.
Hooray! 3==D}
It makes a big difference for me. I find the ribbed ones incredibly irritating. To the point where I would not have sex if ribbed condoms were the only option available. But I have some weird sensory issues so this may not be typical.
They definitely let you know sooner than a regular condom that more lubricant is necessary. Keep ’em slick. I prefer not-ribbed personally.
Not for ribbed very much (noticeable at first but insignificantly so), but we tried one with small bumps and texture all over and that was actually something, which is interesting because that is a texture I haaaate on toys.
Also what peep said, ribbed can be irritating. Also I prefer condomless or toys to any kind of condom, so I mean, it’s not something I bother buying, we just have gotten samples at events and stuff.
As a penis-haver, I agree that lack of condom is best. As long as it’s otherwise a perfectly safe choice, of course!
I had to check your gravitar list. At first I thought it was Margrit from Furi2Play.
That is presumably also what Dorothy’s box contains.
Billie’s is booze. Walky’s is D&MM toys.
But they all have holes in them. Linda doesn’t want her to get away.
Well, if the condoms are that size, she doesn’t know Jason very well…
Way to enable Billie.
Someone took the blue pill. The one one crave the blue alhocol bottle.
I heard claims that Viagra works on women too, so…
F-futanari?
Nope, Viagra enhances sexual arousal in men by increasing the blood flow to the penis, the theory is that the drug could have a similar effect on women, increasing the blood flow to the female genitals and thereby producing better arousal, sensation and lubrication in the genital area.
Well, the anatomy is basically the same. Downside is that increased blood flow has a tendency to make things super over-sensitive, because of how much more tightly packed the nerve endings are there, making it more likely to be painful for a lot of individuals with clitorises, owing to the increased sensitivity, so less lubrication and more, ow, stop.
Next up, the majority of the cast files a mass lawsuit to divorce their parents (and sue for support to maintain their education), and petition the University for funds for their newly formed “Kids who were way better than their parents deserved” support group.
The group will be led by Mary and Mike.
After a number of “incidents” causing damage and injuries to bystanders Mary & Mike will disavow themselves from the group and spend the rest of their lives in cushy jobs as Fox News
rantershosts.Students
Exacting
Mandates on
Matriarchs (and Patriarchs) for
Expenses
Shit, I could have just gone with “Mothers (and fathers)” for that second last line.
Nice! I was unfamiliar with that aspect of the Walkyverse till I googled the name. It seems somehow fitting for the name to appear in the Dumbiverse 🙂
Re: Current Poll
Stop voting for Becky, people! VOTE SARAH! Give Sarah some love! Becky’s face is ALREADY gonna be on almost every page of Book 5! It’s Sarah’s time to shine, dammit!
VOTE SARAH IN 2016!
I’m sorry, but ever since 2008 I will NEVER vote Sarah. You betcha.
What happened in 2008?
Sarah Palin.
…. to be fair she happened in other years as well, but 2008 marked her rise to national recognition and prominence.
Bongos.
Sal actually got a “Straight out of Compton” DVD, as Linda thought Sal would like that movie.
Hey, to be fair, it is a great movie. At the same time, that is just way to humorously depressing for me to not imagine.
Oh no Billie, don’t you remember the last time Walky got drunk?
Who won the doodle book polls for the previous four? I want to spread the love around the DoA cast.
Woah Woah Woah! Keep that in the bedroom where it belongs.
I can’t help it. Sexo loco!
But seriously, found the poll archives, so I’m good on my vote.
Let’s see about 6/8 of the people in selection has already been on a cover including Joyce who’s already been on three now so if anything the one who deserves it the most is Dina… and she’s not in the poll why is that?
There is a lot wrong here.
1) The poll is not about who gets to be on the cover. The poll is about who gets to be doodled inside the book manually by me.
2) Joyce has never been an inside-book-doodle.
3) Dina was the DoA Book 2 inside-book-doodle.
Will there be any doodling of poodles?
Maybe doodling capoodles but only in the Slipshines >.>
No doodling of caboodles?
She won for the third (?) book. I went with Malaya based on cover appearances made.
Malaya fans unite!
As someone whose culture doesn’t really have these things, what exactly goes into a care package? I searched a bit and because it’s such a thing in Western culture I get a lot hits showing off ideas and even pranks and now I’m not sure that it’s exactly for.
If I’m reading this right, here we’d probably just send cash. To our kids bank accounts.
It’s usually just like…a bunch of different cookies. About 50% tasty, 30% good enough to eat when you’re bored and 20% crap that you’ll either eat or throw away eventually.
Also I’ve never received one from a family member. It’s always like a business or a company that is sending them out during the holidays (and is usually sent to my mom cuz I’m not employed!)
Yeah, they’re not even universal part of Western culture. Once Norway struck oil and got filthy, filthy rich, we decided that we’d rather streamline our bank systems to make sending money as quick and painless as possible.
I’m Norwegian and I get care packages. Though sometimes my mother just sends me money and suggests I buy things myself, because the mail costs would be unreasonably high.
Wow. First time I’ve ever met another Norwegian that actually got care packages. I guess we live and learn, don’t we?
A care package is when someone sends you thinks they think you would need or enjoy.
Traditionally home-baked cookies and such-like.
In my family it’s always more like… food. Pasta and rice and canned food, stuff that’s durable so that I don’t starve. And I still get these and I’m in my 30s (though currently unemployed and poor). I get maybe one every 6 months or so lol. I mean, I’m not American either though, so I don’t know if the US has more tradition attached to sending these to kids in college.
When I was in college it was usually just small luxuries like homemade cookies or something. Something to make a person feel appreciated when you’re stressed or homesick, that’s all.
Care packages are a hold over from Long Long Ago, In the Before Times. Your parents would send you home made cookies (to share with your friends), socks, photos, stuff you left behind, stuff you might need (like winter’s coming, so a new scarf). It’s a lot easier to stay in touch AND send straight up money now so I think most people do that in the USA although you can also outsource the sending of care packages and use a company that packs up and sends stuff. I think the people who get the most care packages now are active duty military outside of the USA, where certain things aren’t available even if you have money to spend.
When I was in college my parents would send me a big envelope every few months with my mail in it (mostly credit card offers & my high school asking for alumni donations) and ugly clothing in the wrong size my mom picked up for me because it was on sale. Although she’s a great baker she never sent me any cookies. Cosmic injustice.
it’s usually food and sometimes clothing. The concept stems from a project that started after WWII where the government would get together clothing and combine it with food from the subsidy program (like the infamous “Government Cheese”) and sent it to places that had shortages. The packages had C.A.R.E stenciled on them in big letters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARE_(relief_agency)
When I was stationed in UK (’80) mom would send VHS tapes of stuff she recorded for me, snacks, fun/silly stuff for me and my roommate. My grandmother saved the TV Guide crossword pages for me.
My mom sent me a few in college, it’s just a nice thing to send to someone, particularly college students because they’re away from home – potentially too far to drive. She would just include things to make me happy, like candy or a card or a cd she bought for me. It’s basically just a little gift box sent to someone far away from you. Also, like other people have said, it will often contain things that people maybe can’t get where they’re currently at.
As others have said, it is often stuff that can’t be easily gotten where you are, like regional foods, etc. In this modern age of consumer culture and fast online shipping, the need is much less because those things can be had for money more easily than in the old days.
I did get a sorta-care package from Australia a couple of decades back. I’d sent online friends some niche fiction books very hard to find there, so once sent me various Australian candies et al. Quite liked the Minties. I still have most of the Vegemite, which tells you something. (Unless it has gone off (assuming that is possible))
With college students there is also usually an element of “things that they should be buying for themselves, but won’t /don’t because they are college students”
Candies, small clothing, trinkets, little notes and messages, cash money (because my mom still doesn’t understand or trust online banking very well, it just doesn’t feel real to her), and any little supplies you’d like to have but didn’t budget for, which the sender would ask about when the package is in the planning stage.
Original Care Packages were sent from home to military on the front lines, I think. WW1 or WWii? when it started.
Care Packages like these to Walky and all are usually full of things like the kids favorite homemade cookies, things money in the acct. won’t buy.
Basically imagine all the crap that an 8-year-old with 20 bucks might buy in a dollar store.
“Oh, hey, it’s a cheep plastic fan that spritzes a bit of water in your face as it blows! And comic books! And candy!”
Berlin, Germany even has a monument to the Luftbrücke which supplied the western-allied part of the city with care packages during the blockade by the soviet union. (Berlin sits more or less in the middle of the former GDR which was the soviet occupational zone after WWII, and as the former capital of Germany, had been devided into four zones, one for the US, GB, France and the SU each. The parts of the tree western allies became West-Berlin, more or less a part of the BRD, while the SU part became the capital of the GDR).
My mom sent homemade cookies, sometimes themed candy and chachkes if it were around a holiday. And she’d send stuff for my roommate too (an EQUAL amount of stuff). When I was abroad I’m pretty sure she sent peanut butter. Freshman year she sent me challah and honey for Rosh Hashanah, since we usually went up to grandma’s and it was my first year missing that, but sadly it turns out non-processed bread doesn’t keep in a dorm. 🙁
I’ve sent friends fudge, little trinkets, that sort of thing. Keeping meaning to send another friend socks.
Careful Walky, once you start noticing injustice, it never stops.
It really doesnt. I mean, you want to pretend that a Justice League fighting game would be good, but it’s just kind of average and you have to hope they make a sequel eventually. But they never do!
They are making a sequel to that, apparently.
Hopefully it’s less dumb “what if Superman were eeeeevil” fanfic, and more Plastic Man. Why does Plastic Man never show up in these things?
Because Reed Richards.
And how badly the Fantastic 4 are failing. They don’t even have a running comic anymore! 🙁
(My dad had some old comics, and F4 were pretty neat.)
Have a TV Tropes page for that!
You mean like how you noticed Cybertron’s classism?
Or whatever origin you have nowadays.
To be fair, I think Walky’s too lazy to accidentally become and interplanetary warlord over it.
If their mother had been smart, should have used the same sized box for everyone, just put in less for some. Then Walky wouldn’t have noticed.
I think the perception of it being a smaller gift was intentional. Even if she only meant herself to notice. and maybe Sal.
Pretty sure Linda knew exactly what she was doing.
Well, their mom doesn’t know that Walky’s actually aware of the favoritism now, so she wouldn’t have thought to try to hide it from him.
She probably assumes that everyone agrees with her about Sal.
Thanks to a personal edited timeline where Sal’s “troubled nature” and thus the favoritism only started when she robbed the convenience store.
While I completely agree that it’s all bullshit and their mom is horrible, I really wish they’d just open the damn boxes. Their conversation would have a lot more meaning if they actually knew what they’d received instead of jumping to conclusions based on box size. (Who am I kidding, it’s going to be horribly skewed. Still, the suspense is killing me.)
Standard sitcom plot. Characters leap to conclusions and take drastic almost irrevocable actions based on them, before finding out the truth. Hilarity ensues.
Or we could just wait a few days to see what’s in the boxes before jumping to conclusions.
I’ll go stand in the corner.
A few more days? Tomorrow we switch to Carol. Then to Ruth. We won’t be back here for a few more WEEKS.
Look again, Walky. There’s also a box for Ruth. It’s full of regret and sadness. And it’s as big as the main box.
At least Billie isn’t crying.
Linda sent a package even for Dorothy? She only saw her once!
But she is her David’s GIRLFRIEND!!!!!! Who dresses him.
It would be even more sad if Linda prefers his son’s girlfriend over her own daughter by sending Dorothy something better than Sal.
Like Grandma’s engagement ring.
Don’t be silly. She’d send the ring to Walky. She’d send Dorothy money to buy Walky a suit.
True… though she was more interested in the potential of possibly meeting her than even acknowledging the physical presence of her daughter, so yeah, the only surprising thing is that it’s not larger than Sal’s.
She know what limits not to cross. Or else, it would be too obvious don’t you think?
Linda’s gift to Dorothy – new men’s shirts, for David.
“SHE CAN GET HIM TO WEAR NICE SHIRTS”
“Hello, son’s girlfriend. You are son’s new mother. Please dress him nice”
The real kicker will be finding out that the favouritism is based on the idea that they expect Walky to be able to provide for them in their old age but have long since given up any hopes that Sal will.
“Sally, look. David is basically Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but you’re Beatrix Kiddo. You’ll probably kill us in a high speed chase while Walky will probably just forget to feed us. And we can just order a pizza.”
Nah, Sal is Priss Asagiri. Which means the Walkerton parents better stay the hell away from Tokyo, earthquake zones in general, and anything having to do with GENOM.
Does this make Joyce Linna Yamazaki, the token normal?
…. of all the names the three of you just dropped, I recognized “Shaggy”.
Priss Asagiri and Linna Yamazaki are characters from the anime series Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash, which appeared in the late ’80s and early ’90s respectively. Revised versions also appeared in the 1998 TV series Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, a reboot/revival. Sal sometimes seems a bit like Priss to me, including that they’re both bikers. On the other hand Sal hasn’t tried being a singer yet, or run around in powered combat armour.
She has cyborg augmentations. Real reason she doesn’t roller derby, it wouldn’t be fair.
And since nobody else mentioned it: Beatrix Kiddo is the name of the main character in the Kill Bill movies.
Merciless assassin redeemed by pregnancy.
That…. is the best description I’ve ever seen of her! As emperor of the internet, I hereby dub you Slartibeast* Captain Button. With the Slartibeasthood comes a free cookie every month, as per the internet rules of chivalry.
*At first I came up with “Slardy” a combination of “Sir” and “Lady”. However, since there are many people that are neither sirs or ladies, I decided to instead be inspired by Slartibastfast.
Wouldn’t Joyce be Nene, since Nene is the most naïve of the Knight Sabers?
(At least in 2032. I didn’t watch more than the first episode of 2040.)
I was thinking Amber/Amazi-Girl for Nene, with the double life split between cop and vigilante thing.
Walky for Sylia’s little brother.
But who for that good cop guy with the UST with Priss?
Has the alt text changed? Was there something about cookies in there before or did I imagine it? Did Willis accidentally tell us what’s in the boxes through the alt text???
Or did nobody see that thing about the cookies? Did I just hallucinate the cookies? Which is very possible, I am very hungry xD
I think it did change. This stuff happens – time ripples, dimension shifts, so forth.
A glitch in the Matrix. Agents are en route.
I just uncovered a glitch in The Matrix, didn’t I? I mean, blue pills were already mentioned in these comments today, maybe that was a sign xD
Eat a Snickers.
You probably inagined it, also it would be very rude to Linda to have sent Sal just cookies.
It definitely said “these cookies” in place of “this present” originally.
omg thank you! I seriously thought I was going crazy for a second lol.
Billie in comic mentions alcohol and alt-text mentions 50%.
There must be a hidden meaning in that!
It’s certainly proof of something.
But is the truth, as Hitchcock observes, in the box?
Every few months someone writes into an advice column doing one of two things:
1) complaining about shitty unfair distribution of gifts & how their in-laws/parents/wedding guests/boss/etc consistently gives them small gifts or ignores them while lavishing attention on others
2) complaining how a person in their life has been complaining about shitty gifts and OMG how ungrateful are they even
And the advice giver and the commentors are all “oh gosh how can you even complain about gifts, that’s so tacky, just be grateful you got ANYTHING.
And having grown up in a household where love and approval were measured in the quality and quantity of gifts given/received let me tell you, I just about ALWAYS side with the person complaining about being given shit gifts. Because that is an actual and real manipulative/abusive thing people do, and part of the reason it works is because if you talk about it people think you’re greedy and ungrateful and join in blaming you. And given how soundly Sal’s mom ignored her except to criticize her, giving crap gifts to emphasize her disapproval seems RIGHT up her alley.
Maybe Sal’s box contains Grandma’s Priceless Diamonds that are being passed down to her, or the keys to a new car, or something small but meaningful but I really doubt it. Most likely it’s a token gesture while Walky and Billie get personal thoughtful stuff.
Been there, done that.
Size is not always indicative of value, though I’m doubtful that would be the approach taken here, as Walky’s arc seems like it would be leading elsewhere.
“It’s not the size of the package that counts” which is a phrase mostly said by those who have small packages.
Bigger packages are great, but at a certain point it’s like “seriously what do I even DO with this monstrosity”. Especially if your local UPS guys can’t handle it!
Heh, that actually is the thing at the center of the “package” thing. Those slinging packages think the size matters the most, but those receiving are just wondering how exactly that fits through the doorway and all the extra effort involved, not to mention that it’s often a pain in the ass to “open up” and assemble. Honestly, a nice “dinner out” is often the better “gift”.
I mean, if one is jewelry and a VISA card and the other is junk food, then yeah Walky’s is going to be bigger. I’m reserving judgement until they open the damn things.
What is in the box is actually pretty irrelevant since the comics are about Walky noticing the difference finally. What is in the box is only relevant if you want to argue that Linda “really isn’t being racist”, which some people still try to do even against Mr David Willis.
The thing is, even if Word Of God says Linda’s racist against Sal, it just feels really half-assed. I love Willis and I love DOA, but this is the only plotline I can think of that just feels like it’s there for its own sake, and not as a result of characters and their interactions/flaws. Are there other reasons to call Linda a shitty mom? Totally! Could she still be racist despite having a partially black husband and babies? Also totally! I just feel like when you have two kids of the exact same skin tone (and demeanor in earlier childhood), other forms of favoritism/discrimination are way more likely than racism.
Considering that racism (specifically, colorism?) is a helluva drug, I really don’t find it that implausible.
The problem is that you’re looking at it as if Linda’s just kind of deciding to hate Sal cuz she’s a massive racist, and it’s far more complex than just the skin tone.
Sal spells it out for us when she tells Walky that he was preferred because he was whiter. Walky’s obedient, he does well in school, and he has straight hair. Sal gets angry, she’s done poorly in school, and she has naturally curly hair.
The idea behind is that subconscious racial prejudices have motivated the Walkertons into treating their kids differently and preferring Walky, because Walky has traits that are typically assigned as white, and praised for it, while Sal has traits typically assigned as black, and judged for it, and then it just spirals from there when you have one parental micro aggression as a starting point.
TLDR: The point isn’t “The Walkertons are evil racist jerks”, it’s that their unconscious preference for white traits motivated their parenting of their daughter.
This. The most dramatic and obvious forms of a bigotry* are not always the most damaging and are often the result of more subtle and more prevalent unconscious attitudes that we all carry as societal baggage.
Those are often harder to root out and can be harder to point out because what is “socially normal” supports the continuation of those bigotries up until the point where societal education progresses to the point where the majority start noticing it and calling it out (see how modern audiences recognize some of the problematic nature of blackface and yellowface in movies, but are less aware of whitewashing where non-white people in history are played by white actors or are simply erased from the story to make room for an invented white person (cough cough Stonewall)).
Linda and Charles may have rejected the strange fruit swinging from the poplar trees type of racism, but are not immune to societal messages that whiter skin, more “professional” or “proper” behavior is better and more worthy, kinky hair is “ugly” and “unprofessional”, and so on and enforce that in ways that are damaging, especially to their daughter.
It’s the same sort of thing that made encouraging kids to use dangerous lye-based skin-whitening creams a common thing for awhile in too many black homes.
*And it seems a lot of privileged group members get really defensive about looking at bigotry beyond those bits and view discussions about -isms as mostly ways of the marginalized communities to “get back” at the “bad” dominant group members rather than ways to overall improve treatment and end daily oppressions. So ignoring societal, endemic oppression and -isms and the daily microaggressions they create and balking that it can’t be a form of oppression because it’s not the most dramatically awful version of said bigotry and oppression.
Except that it’s quite likely the preference started long before school and quite likely influenced behavior as much as the other way around.
Sal acting out because of the favoritism is much more likely than the other way around. Or even more accurately, both Walky & Sal act out, but in different ways, shaped by their parent’s treatment of them. It’s not like uber-slacker Walky is really the model child either.
I definitely agree that it’s about unconscious preference rather than active hatred. Which is a very common place for discussions about racism to trip up.
That is indeed what I was saying. However Sal acted, her status as the Problem Child was established before she could actually make any kind of action towards that.
Eh, I still doubt that hair texture is such a deciding factor in how much love you give to your child, and I’m pretty uncomfortable with the idea that listening to your parents and not starting trouble are “white” traits.
Sal’s hair is just something else that makes her more black to her parents, that was kinda sorta the message when her dad tells her it’s “too bad” she went back to her natural hair because it’s “so much prettier when it’s long and straight.” This is told in contrast with obedient, academically gifted, straight haired Walky.
Sal was being neglected long before she started rebelling.
It’s a thing:
http://www.oneutah.org/2007/04/straight-hair-and-intragroup-discrimination/
It’s part and parcel of colorism:
http://racerelations.about.com/od/understandingrac1/a/What-Is-Colorism.htm
And yes, the phenomenon of “acting white” or rather the way certain behaviors are seen by society as fitting into a more middle-class/upper-class mold are seen as “whiter”, whereas things like criminality and protest (often seen as one and the same by racist power structures) are labeled “blacker”. This has been talked about a lot usually in the context of black nerds being bullied by their peers for “trying to act white” because this is the internet and a lot of us on the internet are nerds, but it’s also a phenomenon where society rewards black actors and spokespeople who adopt more “neutral” modes of conversation, clean up any trace of regional accent or patois, do not push against racism in society, and spend their time critiquing black people for not “adopting ‘better’ behaviors” and blaming effects of racism on that.
Hell, Bill Cosby built a lot of his career on this exact type of non-threatening model of “black success” that was built on erasing as many “troubling” pieces of “blackness” as possible while critiquing “other” black people for their “inherent criminality” and the like. And this was a necessary ingredient for his high level of success in white communities and part and parcel why “acting white” has such a bad reputation in many AA communities:
http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC37folder/Cosby.html
And hair has always been a major axis of colorism and part of the hinge on which it turns. Having kinky natural hair has a direct impact on how “hireable” you are regarded:
(I fucking hate Forbes for its apologia and its in evidence in the last paragraphs, but the rest is pretty good: http://www.forbes.com/sites/shenegotiates/2013/03/11/is-your-natural-hairstyle-preventing-you-from-getting-a-job-2/#5f4e15977c0a )
And this leads to a self-policing inside the black community that favors straightened hair over natural kinky hair even when it negatively impacts the person’s health as it’s viewed as “messier”, less attractive, and yes, more black:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/lets-talk-about-colorism-in-the-natural-hair-community_us_566df1dfe4b011b83a6ba4f0
And I’m including this last link that talks about the health risks of hair relaxers, because it’s a beautiful demonstration of the problem in a nutshell. It’s a dermatology thing written for “general audience” on how awful hair relaxers and other products are and how they ruin hair… while also calling straight hair “beautiful” with literally no sense of self-awareness of how attitudes like that drive people to try and hide their natural hair:
https://www.aad.org/media/news-releases/going-to-great-lengths-for-beautiful-hair-dermatologist-shares-hair-care-tips-for-healthy-and-damaged-hair
“The thing is, even if Word Of God says Linda’s racist against Sal, it just feels really half-assed.”
I feel like this might be intentional on Mr. Willis’ part. The way it’s presented is as Sal telling Walky about the preferential treatment he’s been receiving and the reason why. Since then, we’ve been following Walky as he is noticing the difference in how they are treated and starting to understand why.
If Linda had been presented as a Class Toedad racist to the audience, instead of being sympathetic to Walky as he is discovering an uncomfortable truth, we’d be angry with him for being such an idiot that he never noticed it before.
So the lack of strong evidence of Linda being racist is intentional so that we can discover that evidence along with Walky.
Honestly, I think the strongest thing about their parents’ treatment is that it can be hypothetically argued as not being racist*, because a lot of subtle bigotry manifests that way where we don’t think about what motivates our thought processes.
Like, Charles saying “I like your hair when it’s straight” probably isn’t meant to be him literally thinking that his daughter is only pretty when she’s whiter, it’s a bias that’s become ingrained into him by a culture that devalues Sal’s natural hair.
*No this doesn’t mean we’re going to get a sequence where it’s revealed that Sal was wrong about her parents. I’m not an idiot.
And that’s the difficulty in showing microaggressions and this kind of subtle bigotry in fiction.
Basically there will always be a contingent maintaining a form of denialism about it, arguing its not really as bad as it looks and so hypothetically maybe its not the thing that a marginalized group member is recognizing instantly.
And the sad thing is that that type of response lasts through quite a bit of obvious bigotry as well up until the point where it is so obviously malicious that the responses all become about how “cartoonish” it is and how “no one in real life is like that”.
We’ve seen that here with the discussion surrounding Mary’s transphobia against Carla, Becky and her dad up until the point he pulled out his gun and started hunting her, and so on.
Personally, I really like how Willis has been handling a lot of these moments and showing the subtle bullshit as much as the big scary dramatic stuff that happens to you when you are marginalized.
I mean, I imagine the reason he made it word of god rather than just letting it become obvious over time as it is was because he knew some people wouldn’t believe it could be racism from the very parents, or when Sal has the same skin tone as Walky, or all the other incorrect points made in the comments since Sal brought it up, often implying she’s just delusional. At the same time, I bet it would feel less forced to you if it hadn’t been word of godded.
I also disagree with you, because evidence has been both subtle and less-so, and developed more visibly as Walky learned and Billie publicly agreed, but I feel like you seeing it as unnecessarily being confirmed might be part of it.
Sal always comes across as cool when her mother does this crap to her. Especially since both parents were total assholes over the Parents Weekend when Sal actually put that outfit on that she hates just to please them.
I don’t think she is every going to let them get to her again: or at least never show anyone that they did.
It’s Sal’s method of coping with the pain of it. Deflecting it away with a “pfft, I’m too rebel motorcycle to care what others think of me” even though we’ve seen her in private absorbing the little stab wounds of moments like these as well as the well of anger she carries inside for all the bullshit she’s put up with.
Honestly, I think it’s a similar armor to Carla or Becky. You present the outward appearance of something unflappable and unbreakable, so as to regain some power from constant losses of it and hide away the pain so it can’t be used against you. Just showing the shell who’s too “cool/uncaring/wacky” to be bothered or scarred by that kind of shit.
But it’s probably part and parcel of why only Marcie and sometimes Jason currently has a relationship with the real Sal who reveals her feelings and fears and small excitements and shows the vulnerability underneath the surface.
See also: Why I became one of those people with a great sense of gallows humor. Cuz the thing worse than being sucker-punched is having an entire room see you get sucker-punched and witness your suffering with unsympathetic eyes. Easier to pretend the sucker-punch didn’t hurt.
Yup, deflect and minimize, make a joke about it just being a thing, whatever, and never ever let it show the utter mess it has made in our lives or the amount of effort we need to expend to hold it back. And take some of the power back by developing the blackest of humors.
It’s a useful default mode for getting through things like endemic societal oppression and a constant flood of bullshit.
Everything you said was 100% spot on.
The downside of this attitude was explained to me best years ago by a girl I played soccer with. She said, “you just toss it aside and secretly promise to deal with later when no one is around. But when you keep having shit thrown at you, you eventually run out of room to toss everything. And then one tiny thing sends the whole like toppling down on top of you.”
When I asked her what she did when that happened, she looked down and said in the most deadpan and disconnected tone ever, “you just let it all roll off your back and then pick everything up. And try not to cry at how trashed everything is.”
….on happy note: this girl is doing a lot better currently. Married a wonderful man who adores her, and had a gorgeous baby boy.
Ayup. The “all topppling down” bits are what I’ve been dealing with a lot lately. I got through a lot of bad, but I did so by throwing a lot of it down into the pit to deal with later and so now, it’s later, so I’ll just lose a random weekend here or there or get hit with a minor thing that just wrecks me while I process through a lot of the delayed emotions.
Ironically enough, this comic has helped a lot with that sort of thing.
I hope there isn’t an element of it like how Danny just accepts the abuse he gets from his parents. How normal it feels to him.
I am certain that is a part of it. From Sal, I get a sense of, “Yep, I’m an afterthought. Again. Whatever.”
Like sexual harassment when you’re a woman Inamed STEM, eventually that stuff just becomes background noise. You get used to being treated poorly and just don’t have the energy to get freshly pissed off about it
I think it’s a little of her accepting the neglect (as much as one can in these situations), but I think she’s also perceptive enough to at least see it’s unjust. I wouldn’t even call it “accepting” so much as ” oh, this shit again…Time to play my favorite game: Is Mom Still A B!tch?….annnnnd YUP. Wow she’s 0 for 750,976!”
That’s at least how I interpret this based on her comment to Walky.
It starts to become your normal after a while.
Because everything is sad, I will now say the sweetest possible thing I can think of.
Walky will switch boxes with Sal in the middle of the night, that or just share with her.
Since last strip I just hope he’ll share if it’s uneven.
Oh man, so much to enjoy here.
Panel 1: That moment of vain hope where he’s desperately pulling at any fragment to not have to resign himself to the one blaring in his face. Like, oh, maybe she just randomly split your gift in two and we’re all equal after all and you aren’t completely right about our parents favoring me over you. It’s just a really good character beat and one echoed by a lot of the comment section trying to cling to optimism themselves the last few days.
Panel 2: Oof, that pause there as he fully takes in the ranking system infused into the boxes, seeing that his very recent girlfriend whom his mom has met exactly once gets equal treatment to his sister and much less than the “semi-adopted” sister-like person. You can tell that that’s the moment that his denialism has just surrendered and he’s just fully seeing the gulf of his privilege with eyes unclouded by defensiveness.
And that face on Sal, just stone-face sizing up the situation, like, yup, dear ol’ brother a’mine, that’s been my life all right, just heart-breaking, but not as heart-breaking as Billie actively avoiding looking up at all. It’s clear she’s been silent witness to this unfairness for a long time and she’s learned not to intervene in this sort of family drama.
And that might also partially explain her love of loud and directly angry if she is used to being surrounded by passive-aggressive attacks and underhanded snubs done with a smile on the lips and a soft-word… when she’s surrounded by anything at all.
Panel 3 and 4: This is such a big moment for Walky. He’s finally aware of the gulf of his privilege and he’s recognizing a microaggression for what it is. He’s truly empathizing with his sister and recognizes that this is something that people should get mad about but he doesn’t have the history of absorbing this sort of bullshit that informs the futility of pushing back at every single instance of it.
But, it does matter that he notices. For Sal, being the one targeted, she’s never been able to not notice, but has absorbed it alone, while her brother has denied any sort of inequality. But finally, her brother is seeing what has been her daily life and cares that it is inequal. She’s not alone in this moment and that softens the sting of the microaggression a little bit and makes it hurt less.
And that’s an important piece of bridging their relationship now that they are living in the same area again.
Panel 5: Hoo boy, Billie still staring at her box, casually recommending alcohol. Makes one wonder if that’s the origin of her drinking problem. A way to escape the awkwardness of silent cold wars between parents and awkward unequal standoffs between Sal and her parents. Not to mention seeing the casual racism that can happen in mixed-race parental relationships and having to quietly suffer through it.
Something that started as a means of just tuning it out that clicked into her addictive personality and became a spiral she is finding it impossible to escape out of.
And Walky’s last comment. Honestly, it makes me think of a lot of the defensiveness that surrounds privilege and I feel a lot of it comes from this little piece. That noticing things sucks.
By which I mean, noticing things sucks for everyone, but those who are dominant group members can afford to ignore it and are used to ignoring it in a way that marginalized group members can never do. And so when they can’t help but notice it, they feel that pain and uncomfortableness, but they know that they don’t usually feel that.
And so they try to run back to the ignorance and grow to resent the person who brought the reality to their attention like that marginalized group member invented the oppression just to make them feel bad and hurt them. And this then justifies more oppression and more ill-treatment, because the alternative is to subject yourself to something you could walk away from and grow from a position of pure ignorance into one of empathy and understanding and oh yes, things sucking. A lot. In places where you now stop hiding from.
Yep, this. I especially like how Sal’s resignation about the situation seems to have driven the point home for Walky that this has been going on for a long time and isn’t something new or unusual. He knows his twin. He knows she normally would be pissed off at the unfairness because Sal has a strong sense of justice. So for her to not have any fight in her left about it, and to treat it with less emotion than a passing rain storm would get… Implications are not pretty.
I am guessing that is why she turned away. Someone else acknowledging that it is unfair can cause a lot of intense feelings that (for me at least) can lead to tears and then everyone is uncomfortable. So I try to go away to collect myself and regain equilibrium.
What’s actually in the care packages for everyone: A forged Canadian Citizenship certificate and passport, a Swiss bank account number, and a couple thousand dollars in various currencies, with a note saying “This is in case Trump becomes president.”
“Well, R.I.P. USA.”
I have trouble believing that Canada would be a safe haven in those circumstances.
I mean, Trump’s probably played Risk before, so if you’ve got a lot of dudes in the US and you want that North America bonus, you’re going to invade Canada pretty quick.
Just ambush the American army when he has it all assembled for an incredibly egotistical speak. At least it has before…on South Park at least. Plus, Canada may not have the biggest army, but Canadian troops have a history of high quality soldiers since 1914. Plus, Canada could always try a version of the “let them freeze” Russian strategy.
Oh, sure.
I’m just suggesting that because none of that’s possible under the rules of Risk, Donald Trump might not see it as an obstacle.
First it was Napoleon, then it was the Fue-ah I mean the Chief, I think the lesson of “pack some fucking winter clothes” is already learned so I wouldn’t count on the freeze strategy.
It’s not just staying warm – the Russians have always been masters of using the winter to their advantage, sabotaging invaders, cutting off their supply lines, and lowering morale. They don’t just wait for their enemies to freeze to death.
The US DoD used to have plans in case Canada invaded the USA. I suppose the Canadians have a track record on this, 1812 and all that.
The USA invaded Canada before – well, some Fenians dressed up in uniform and wandered about the prairie for a bit.
The US invaded Canada first in the war of 1812. The first actual invasion in the war was an American attack on what is now Windsor, Ontario. (But was then Sandwich, Upper Canada.) (Though the British made the first move in the war, it wasn’t a move into the US.)
The counter-invasion was more successful, sure, but it was in response to an American invasion of Canada.
There was also an attempt in the early stages of the Revolutionary war to to invade Canada in order to convince the people of Quebec (only really populated part of Canada besides Nova Scotia at that point) to join the war against the British. It didn’t really work.
Every nation has plans for war with all their neighbors. Superpowers have plans for war with everybody. Doesn’t mean you’re actually going to do it, just that you’re prepared.
Also good strategic and tactical exercises.
Yey! Sibling bonding!
Over… over mom being kinda racisty.
Unity against crappy parents is the BEST sibling bonding. Far preferable to crappy parents pitting the siblings against each other.
A lot of crappy parents seem to take glee in pitting siblings against each other
http://i.imgur.com/I0PLQCz.png
Don’t you dare try and take credit for that.
I’m not, but I don’t know the rescue helicopter who made it, so I couldn’t credit it. Still wanted to share. Sorry for appearing like I wanted to claim credit.
It’s by Yotomoe. He posted it further up the page.
Not really sure where else to put this. Love the comic. Uninstalled adblock for the comic. You have video ads that kill my browser. Further, video ads are really obnoxious. I do not like having my ears hijacked like that. Please reconsider hosting these types of ad.
We don’t want to host those types of ads. The businesses who use those types of ads sneak their ads onto sites using terrible underhanded means. We can attempt to remove them if you provide information.
I can’t view DoA on campus because I can’t install an ad-blocker there. It immediately brings Firefox to a standstill. What kind of information do you need?
It works fine on my ages-old iPad, so maybe it gets better when you disable flash?
Yeah, I use a script blocker and shut down any ad that gets disruptive. (Though this does take a bit of trial and error, especially since which ads are served tends to change up whenever the page reloads after blocking or unblocking something.) Better than turning adblock on, since at least then Willis gets the money for ads that don’t suck.
The URL they seem to be coming from is vidible.tv and they seem consistently in the square ad to the right of the comments (unlike most of the other ads, they don’t disappear from the script blocker’s list after I allow or disallow them, which is weird).
I have Adblock on DoA for the past year and haven’t had these type of ads happen. Hopefully it’s not on your end?
Whoops, I mean Adblock off, ha. Sorry
While helping out is good, may I recommend Flash Block? You can even turn it on for HTML5 video.
So the focus is (and should be) on Sal here, but since everyone’s talking about that… I wonder what else Walky is missing. Sal seems to think she’s treated worse by her parents due to latent (or perhaps not so latent) racism. But Walky’s not exactly white. It makes me wonder if he’s suffered some of it too, and has just been writing it off as normal.
It also makes me wonder about the Walkerton marriage in general. “But I can’t be racist! I have a black husband!” comes to mind.
Or maybe Sal’s wrong, and there’s some other reason. Maybe they just gave up on her when she wasn’t as easy to deal with as a kid than Walky.
Or maybe it’s a fakeout, and inside the box is the key to a locker stuffed with ALL THE CARE PACKAGES.
Or maybe Walky’s is just bigger because Nachito bags are mostly air.
From Sal’s perspective, skin color is the only evidence she has of anything “different” between her and her brother. She sees her brother like we see Walky, and isn’t blind to his faults. However, at a very young age she learned that Walky could get away with things she couldn’t get away with, and was treated like he was “special”. Sal had comments made about her hair looking prettier when straightened, and Walky got to walk around looking slovenly. From her perspective, her being “less white” than him was the only conclusion she could draw. That’s not in quotes to be sarcastic btw, I’m just quoting her reasoning.
When you’re the less favored/scapegoat in your family, and you’re young and angry from years of always being “not good enough” you tend to settle for the harshest answer you can see. It takes a lot of time, perspective, and sometimes therapy to eventually come to terms with whatever the real reason behind the favortism is. Sal’s mom (who I am in no way defending) may have her own set of insecurities that she pirojects on to Sal. Walky may remind their mother of herself more than Sal. Sal may have been more “difficult” to raise prior to the gas station hold-up. Who knows?
What’s important is that Sal’s years of hurt and anger are being validated and finally heard by her brother. Him finally seeing the difference in their treatment and acknowledging it won’t fix any of Sal’s feelings about their parents, but at the very least it’s a simple acknowledgement of how unfair their situation is.
Sometimes that acknowledgement, that to an outsider may seem small and disingenuous , is exactly what a person needs at that time.
I think Willis (correct me if I’m wrong Cheesus of the Multiverse) has stated via Word of God that Sal’s theory about the Walkertons is correctTM and it is because Walky is a lighter shade that he gets all the attention/praise. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if the fact sexism is also present as Walky being a boy still might be believed as the one who will succeed. Sal’s attitude during visitation implies they WANT their daughter to be incredibly feminine and submissive which implies they have very strict gender roles in mind for their kids.
Except, again, she’s not a lighter shade. She doesn’t appear that way on screen, and the comic has explicitly stated that they look identical. (book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/tall/)
Most people think the only visual difference is hair, and blame the rest on personality. Though one guy came up with the idea that there’s some sexism in there–that it’s okay for a guy to be a bit dark but not a woman. That does mirror how Hollywood seems to see things, at least.
There are different physical traits that are racially marked, though. In-universe, Sal and Walky might have differently shaped noses, mouths, or entirely different facial structures. They’re cartoons, so there’s no way to know.
Sexism and racism can also coincide in nasty ways that white feminists don’t notice; it can be incredibly hard for black women to be acknowledged as delicate or feminine at all, and there’s a billion dollar industry capitalizing on that, from straight weaves to contacts to skin lighteners. Folks who think it comes down to them having the same hex code for their skin are missing a lot of context.
The interesting thing in all of this is that Walky actually fully recognizes and repeats this notion of separation by race between them, which means it was reinforced by society and his parents. After all, in response to Joyce, he describes Sal as black and himself as “generically beige”:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/03-answers-in-hennessy/kinky-2/
Subconsciously accepted racist programming is best racist programming!
I think people are on to something with the idea that sexism plays its role. Growing up fundie, my sister caught flak for deviating from any dress or apperance-based standards a lot more than I did. Joyce, et. al., find Sal’s look to be “cool”, but to the older generation a more sexually degrading word probably springs to mind. Hence her need to dress like she attended Avalon High for her parents. And even then there were comments about her hair. We’ve done a pretty good job in society equating “white” with “appropriate looking”.
Quite possibly. Women and even young girls tend to be judged more on appearance than men and boys do.
It certainly predates her current fashion style though, judging by the childhood flashbacks we’ve seen.
IIRC, that was the first, easily passed over, hint at this storyline. Well before Sal brought it out in the open.
Though obviously Walky’s flavor is caramel, not beige. Beige isn’t even a flavor.
I honestly love those foreshadowing hints. Like that one, the way Dina’s eyes lit up when Becky invited her to the party, Carla angrily yelling about how the dick drawn on her door was a hate crime, and so on.
Like little moments that just scream to those who recognize them that are then filled out and made more explicit later. I feel like it really rewards close reading of the comic and over-interpreting little behaviors or art choices.
Okay but, like, that was a punchline, and I always thought Walky was being sarcastic because their skin tones are exactly the same.
In hindsight, it’s a clear indicator of how Walky views his sister, and himself, that he feels the need to separate his sister into “black”, but himself into “generically beige.”
Someone made me realize that the sequence was, essentially, the part where Walky says that his sister is black when her hair poofs out and she gets angry because she’s performing poorly in school.
It was a punchline and it was funny and everyone took it as that and laughed and moved on and then later on Sal brings up the racism and we go back and look at that line and go “Well shit. There it was, staring us in the face all along.”
Because Willis is good at this.
We know for sure that their hair textures are different and that’s part of the issue. (See her dad’s reaction to her natural hair texture.) Sal got blacker hair, where Walky got whiter hair. (His CAN kink up, apparently, but tends to be straighter without chemical relaxers.)
Coming back to this several hours later, I think grades may have also been a factor. Sal has shown she isn’t unable to learn, but requires a good and patient teacher who makes it easy for her to understand. Walky was the “genius” who blew through school without studying. Which, as a totally personal opinion, shows he can regurgitate information but retains nothing after the test. Sal’s mom (was it Linda?) didn’t seem like she had the patience to deal with helping with math homework. So her personal bias again goes to Walky.
I agree with Charles about the “femininity” thing also being a factor…which is a gigantic, contradictory spectrum of confusion. For a simple example: hoop earrings were trendy in 2002. I wanted hoop earrings because Android 18 and Sailor Uranus had them and I thought they were cool/pretty. My mom forbade me to wear them. Reason: hoop earrings were “slutty”.
I’m inclined to believe Sal’s issues with her intelligence are probably her parents doing well before she became convinced of her own worthlessness. Linda is projecting the idea that Walkerton is a genius and Sal is a dummy and while the former isn’t something she can affect–the latter is something she can encourage. Tell a child she’s stupid long enough and she’ll think she is. Tell a man he’s a genius and he’ll lose all motivation to work hard. http://www.dumbingofage.com/comics/2013-10-02-footforward.png
David Willis has stated before that Sal is right in that her parents are racist.
It is not ‘blatant’ racism like calling someone the n-word or outright saying white people are better. It is the internalised kind where someone who talks whiter, behaves whiter and just in general acts ‘whiter’ and conforms to more ‘white’ stereotypes is viewed as, and treated as, better.
Walky gets all the attention and praise and is generally treated a hell of a lot better because while his skin is the same shade as Sal’s, his behaviour and mannerisms are more ‘white’. He himself has said that he comes across more as a ‘beige’, unlike Sal.
Yeah, though I wouldn’t be surprised if sexism isn’t playing a role as well. Sal’s attempts to compensate seem to be pretty much about being as feminine as possible with Billie being favored above her. Albeit, that could also be racism.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was involved to some degree as well, it just hasn’t been explicitly revealed that sexism is actually at play. There is definitely room for it to fit in too though.
However, I saw Sal’s attempt to compensate when her parents were visiting to be more about appeasement so they wouldn’t make passive aggressive and outright rude comments at her. Unfortunately, it still didn’t prevent the offensive comment about her hair (even if it were to not be racist, telling someone ‘I prefer your hair when it is X’ implies you do not like it the way it currently is which is hurtful all on its own).
It’s well-meaning moderate racism. MLK Jr. talked about it in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (which, if you haven’t read, GO READ. In my humble opinion it was the most powerful and insightful thing he wrote).
Liberal racism may seem kinder and gentler than full-out white-hoods-and-n-words racism, but in the long run it’s often more damaging, because liberal racism is the insidious sort that seeps into all aspects of society.
A lot of people hold the attitude “There’s no racism without Klansman.” Unless it’s the most blatant of examples it’s not really racism. Minority group X getting arrested more and getting longer jail sentences? That’s not because of structural racism, it’s because “those people” are more criminal. The fact who “those people” are varies depending on location and era doesn’t get through.
And the effect of that attitude becomes that racism is a horrendous accusation and talking about it becomes even more of a problem than actually being racist – unless you’re Klan level racist.
Racism is this horrible thing about hating blacks and wanting to kill them. If anyone suggests someone might be racist, that’s what they’re talking about, which means not only can it be easily dismissed, but you can get hideously offended by it, since it’s such a wild accusation.
That’s stupid. But then there is no such thing as intelligent racism anyway.
Ooooh. I know this scene. I’ve lived it. Let’s see if I can predict this box-situation before it happens. Billy got a nice shirt or a nice jacket from a high-end store, Dorothy got jewelry (like a bracelet or earrings), Walky got a $5k laptop, and Sal got an otterbox for her iPhone and is receiving a text from her Mom off screen that says there was a free upgrade available on their family plan and they used it on Walky to get him a later model of iphone with more storage because he downloads a lot of apps. The text goes on to say that they would have let her use it but Sal’s mom assumed she only uses her phone for texting so she’s stuck with her beat up 4g with a cracked screen and 2mb of storage space remaining.
I don’t think Linda would bother texting Sal. She’d just send Walky the new phone with a “here you go, Sweetie” note.
I liked things better when I lived in my own self-involved world.
Oh Walkerton and your Generically Beige GuiltTM.
I really want to know how the heck Linda can not realize that this sort of stuff makes her an asshole.
No one ever thinks they’re the villain.
My guess is that she think she’s giving her kids their due rewards, if she’s thinking about it at all. Favoritism has the effect of creating it’s own justifications after a while.
There are quite a few comments going into this. I think linking to them is easier than repeating what they are saying:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/angrier/#comment-1025501 (start of a comment tree with many interesting comments)
This one probably shows us what Linda would be likely to say if called out: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/angrier/#comment-1025217
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/03-when-god-closes-the-door/angrier/#comment-1025150 Not the opening comment, but further down the reply tree; the comments by NotPiffany and Cerberus. The shortest comments, that nevertheless reveals a lot.
You know, size doesn’t always matter. One Christmas my brother got a HUGE box and I had the small one. I was still pretty excited.
My brother received the 5-in-1 board game set.
I got a GBA. 😀 😀 😀
(For the record, my brother already expressed no interest in it as he prefers board/PC games)
I was that kid. Two weeks after my 14th birthday, my mother was wiping down the kitchen table, looked over at me sitting there and said, “You had a birthday recently, didn’t you.” My dad commented on my 16th birthday because the car insurance rate went up.
Other than that, my birthdays went pretty much unnoticed.
But every April 7th was a big event, with a home made chocolate cake with white icing and presents and friends invited over. Take a guess what my brothers birthday was.
Thanks for bring up bad memories Willis.
“DAMN YOU, WILLIS!”
Well, for what it’s worth –
Happy All Those Birthdays, Ed.
Dang.
Happy birthday, Edward.
Happy birthday (or belated birthday, or early birthday), Mr. Starsmith.
Sal’s package is just a bulk box of birth control pills and some safe sex flyers.
Nah, it’s a DIY tattoo removal kit. The Walkertons can be a bit heavy-handed, sometimes.
That’s probably the saddest part of this: Sal is so used to being ignored or marginalised by her parents that she can’t even muster anger… or even sadness about it. It’s just another scar on a heart so scarred that she can’t even really feel new wounds anymore.
Yup, and that’s a shitty point, to just be absorbing blows and not even fully feeling them, just dumping them in the big giant pit of accumulated bullshit. Like, yup, this sure is Saturday all right.
It makes me hope she can emotionally distance herself from her family soon.
Except she might be getting Walky back. Which is good, even if he is a goofball.
He’s a goofball, but he’s -our- goofball!
There’s actually a bright spot which will only lead to more misery as it’s fairly clear Linda has expectations of Walky to become a Doctor and succeed in life when she’s raised an incredibly lazy spoiled and entitled millennial. One who has no aspirations to anything approaching importance. So, Walky has that conversation to look forward to.
Nah. In my experience moms like that never, EVER blame their children. He’ll be 30 and if he’s doing well in anything other than being a doctor she will take it to mean he would’ve been a fantastic doctor. If, instead, he’s not doing anything with his life she will blame ex-girlfriends, a bad educational system, opportunities that were “taken” from him, or even his sister.
Having grown up with such a mother who, until later in life, I failed to realize had been expecting me to a be lawyer since toddlerdom, this isn’t quite true as Walkerton (just like me) is probably going to push back once he realizes he’s being pushed in the first place. This will lead to many-many fights I think.
Am I the only one left with any hope that there is a legitimate reason why sal’s box is so much smaller.
I think the problem with that assumption is even if Mama Walkerton wasn’t being passive aggresssive, they have such an unhealthy relationship she doesn’t know what her daughter likes or is like.
This. So much this.
If you look at the first two strips with Sal, Sister and Smokin, it looks like Walky hadn’t seen Sal from the time she got sent to Catholic school until the time she pulled up at Indiana University; it looks like she wasn’t even home during the summer before college. At what point during the past five years would Linda have had the opportunity to get to know her daughter?
Possible. Just really unlikely. Especially now that it’s been played up for a second strip. “Black girl seeing racism when there really isn’t any” just isn’t a storyline I think Willis is going for.
Is anyone else kinda reminded of Seven? WHAT’S IN THE BOX? WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!
Gosh darn it we went almost the entire storyline without referencing that and you ruined it!
No, it’s higher up in the comments, too. 🙂
I can’t hear that line in Brad Pitt’s voice.
It’s Handsome Jack for me.
Here’s hoping the box contains a smaller box containing keys to a new motorcycle.
I can’t quite put my finger on why, but panel four of this comic makes it one of my favorites.