Thursday, January 19, 2012

The Problem With Blackface

Last Halloween I saw in Prisma (Finland’s Wall-Mart) a young man in blackface. He was wearing a brown 1970’s leisure suit with its typical wide collars and bellbottomed pants. He also had a black afro wig on. This does not happen in America. A Caucasian would be lynched for doing that. It is considered incredibly racist because of context. Finland does not have this same context making it not racist but ignorant. Just like the rockabilly girl with a confederate flag sown on her jacket she is probably more ignorant more than she is racist. This post is not for Americans but for other people around the world who don’t get the context.

Most of us know the context of the Nazi flag in Finland and it is only used by racists. This was not the case a few decades ago. I read a passage in a book called Häräntappoase by Anna-Leena Härkönen about this. Not having the text in front of me I will summarize from memory. The main character mentions a problem his school had with punks wearing the Swastika, in his school you weren’t really a punk unless you had one. The school had to ban them and educate the students on the holocaust. Did this dampen the enthusiasm of said punks to wear it? Not particularly. When you are proud of your identity and one of your symbols is tied up to ignorance you stick with your guns. I kind of think that a lot of rockabillies would still wear the confederate flag even if you told them what they meant; the compassionate intelligent ones would stop.

Let me explain the context of blackface as well as I can. I am no expert on it but I think I can explain a few things. It goes back to the Jim Crow era in the US, and to an even earlier time. Jim Crow laws were enacted in the South after the North won the civil war. They essentially kept Black people in the place they were in before the war. It allowed for the same discrimination. Essentially Blacks and Whites were separated in all public arenas and it made it possible for White healthcare workers to refuse lifesaving treatment to Blacks and even to refuse to perform their jobs in their presence. They prohibited intermarriage between Blacks and Whites and you were considered black no matter how little black blood you had, unless you could “pass” for white, which meant living as one and presenting yourself as 100% Caucasian [link].

This affected the casts of plays and movies, because Blacks and Whites did not perform together. For this reason White actors donned black paint on their faces to play Black people. They were always portrayed as dumb, lazy buffoons or as evil, violent and oversexed. These roles reinforced the role of blacks as less than, as animals. This helped to fuel a perversion of justice known as lynchings. Lynchings were a grotesque pass time for Southern Whites. If a Black man so much as looked at a white woman in a way that was interpreted as sexual interest by on lookers he would be hunted down and hung up on a tree and people would picnic with their children as his body bloated in the hot sun.

Lynchings were the furthest and cruelest extreme of Jim Crow. It also fostered poverty, ignorance and hopelessness. Blackface is a symbol of degrading blacks and portraying them with negative stereotypes and fueling violence and injustice. Blackface is the symbol of death and injustice the same way the swastika is or the confederation of the southern United States is. Let’s just stop blackface in Finland before it becomes a thing.


Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Like Race Chugging Lysol...

Do you ever feel like having discussions with certain people is like race chugging Lysol? Even when you win you still end up blind and brain damaged. You know, like most internet arguments. I have a friend who says the most ridiculous things. Not like the world will end this December but still pretty dumb.

“Have you noticed you never see disabled Rom (gypsie) children? They must keep them somewhere.” This is said in a tone implying something nefarious is going on. Perhaps that is because they are a small minority; there are fewer gypsies in Finland than black people. I see very little majority Finn disabled children in public why would I expect to see many more disabled Rom kids?

“Did you know President Tarja Halonen is secretly gay and her marriage is a sham?” How is that relevant, pray tell? I really do not care. Her secret post-menopausal yearnings are of no consequence to me. Still, I would like to point out she has a daughter, she was living with her boyfriend prior to her election and after it and only married due to a public outcry that they would not let the presidents boyfriend live in the official residence so she was not really interested in having a marriage, sham or not, she was perfectly content. It was society at large that wanted it. What makes her seem lesbian? Is it because she has short hair? Is it because she is not pretty? Is it because she is the first female president the country has had?

“Why do Native Americans live on reservations? Why don’t they just live according to their traditional ways in nature?” OMFG!!! I have just lost my sight! Go live is a sauna!

Also I have found myself saying: “Please stop imitating what you think is native American singing.” and also “Stop singing in fake African, it is really offensive.”

This girl is not stupid. She is not untraveled. She is not stuck in an ethno centric bubble. She has traveled. She hangs out with a lot of international people. Why do things like this come out of her mouth? Why does she think people with a different culture are somehow fundamentally different from her? Why do many of us think this?

Sunday, January 8, 2012

The Name of God more JW

I have still been in contact with the Jehovah’s witnesses and we are spinning around in circles. It is actually extremely interesting for me. The poor lady had a stroke but is recovering really well but now comes by with her husband. I really enjoy my chats with them, great people. It will be sad when they realize they are getting nowhere in converting me and stop coming by.

The subject we are still discussing is the importance of the name of God. This is not the most important topic to me, as I have steted before, but it is to them so I have an advantage but for what purpose? We are not in the midst of battle. A lot of Christians would think it a battle for souls but I do not see it that way. I hope they move onto something else because the conversation is getting stale. We are saying the same thing in different ways over and over again.

They bring up Bible verses and how we are constantly told to honor Gods name, to which I say: These passages cannot literally mean the name of God, if this was the case we would walk around saying “Oh God I honor and worship your name, oh Lord.” We are not called to honor and worship the name of God but God himself what we are dealing with here, in my opinion (obviously in my opinion, it is to be assumed, since this is my blog and others do not share the interpretation) is an expression. When it talks about how the people of God are sullying the name of Jehovah among the other nations it talks about the reputation of God.

I do not disagree that Jehovah is the name of God. I merely doubt its importance and relevance to me as his child. Calling him by a proper name makes him one among many. I do not see why I need to differentiate him from other gods when I believe there are none but him, hence the capital G. I call my parents äiti and isä (mom and dad), not Tuula and Reijo, because they are the only parents I have, I do not need to differentiate them. If I did I would feel distant from them.

“Well, Skeptigirl”, you may ask “why does the Bible mention Jahveh so many times in many versions and according to the JW in the original Hebrew?” That is an excellent question generic reader. YHWH appears in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, well a bunch of times I think. I am no Hebrew Bible scholar so let’s smoothly segway out of this, pay no attention to my waving hands and ridiculous dance routine, to English Bible translations. Four times in the KJV . Other Bible translations I cannot easily enough find the data on but in truth it is not mentioned once in the New Testament. That should give us pause. You mean, this is so important but Jesus did not mention it once? Really? That is right. I know it was written in Greek but if it was so important would the writers not have put it there.

Now I feel skeptical. Want to know what I think? Sure you do. The world view of the Old Testament was completely different from us. We must view it through those lenses. In the Old Testament there were many gods. Not really but in the world view of the people. They lived in a world populated by many local and global deities. When God introduced himself to Abraham (not as YHWH) other gods were present and worshipped in the household that God needed to be differentiated from. To Moses he said he was I Am but there is differing opinions on this point.

The point I am trying to make is that I am willing to admit the name of God is YHWH but I don’t think he meant me to call him by that name; maybe I will share with you later a story of how God taught me to refer to him. It would be useless to call him that because it creates a distance between us and assumes he may not be the only God. I believe he is and speaking to him in a way that assumes, or even hints that he is not, is irreverent. Sure, you or I can question this because irreverence is only possible if one believes in something whole heartedly. Irreverence is not possible by those who do not believe. For example, it is impossible for an atheist to be irreverent.

So that is where I am in the talk with the JW. What is going on with you?

Sunday, November 20, 2011

When You Have no Idea

This post is a somewhat a departure from religion and other themes I cover. I was reading some fitness blogs, as I often do. I am also thinking of starting taekwondo again, the popular and greatly criticized sport (criticised by people who don't understand the point of it). So I have been thinking about fitness and body image a lot. I think I understand how it is for people who are overweight and are trying to get into shape. Hard, that is what it is. Slow progress is also what comes to mind, nothing like what shows like the biggest loser would have us beleave.

Still the truth is, I have no idea what this feels like. I have never been overweight. I have never been so out of shape I was endangering my own health. I do know what it is like to struggle to get back to my prepregnancy weight and not achieving it for years, but that is not the same thing, because I was normal weight through all this. I was "overweight" slightly during my pregnancy but the second I gave birth I was normal weight for my height, so not the same thing at all.

I don't undertand what it is like to carry another me in excess fat. I do know what unexpectedly gaining weight does to my running. I do know how it slows me down and makes my runs shorter and frustrates me, but that is not the same thing.

I am not writing this to show off the excellent convergeance of nature, nuture and will. I am saying that we do not understand the strugles of others especially when we have not lived through them. It would be arrogant and selfabsorbed of me to think these minor physical problems I have gone through tell me one thing about the struggles of truly overweight people.

People who are thin often think they know what is going on and compare it to their own struggles and come up with an offensive and wrong picture of overweight people. They are not any lazier than the general public, they can be extremely hard workers and that may contribute to their weight problem. They do not necesarily gorge themselves, just a few extra unused calories a meal over a few years can do more than a few weeks of total gluttony. An extremely large person can't just get on a treadmill and start sprinting away the pounds, no matter what the biggest loser would have you beleave.

Did I get it right? I did say I do not know what it is like to be overweight or the struggles but like with any people who are different from me I try to encounter them as people and look past the differences and try not to explain them away using my own experience. If we do try to explain things using our personal experiences to explain other people in areas we know nothing about we end up with statements as stupid as: "That person is black because they haven't bathed in a while." That statement is offensive and completely incorrect, unless the person we are talking about is a caucasian coal miner. Weather or not a person's circumstances match ours, or not, we should attempt to get to know them as real people and not lessen their humanity by turning them into objects and narrating their stories outselves.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

The Lies we Believe

I never accept what people say at face value. I do not think this makes me a cynical person nor does this make me an ass. You may say: "But you gotto trust someone. How can you live like that?" Quite well, thank you. That is not the point, I trust my husband. The point is he is a human being and he might be wrong and frequently is. I am wrong a lot too so don't just accept everything I have to say because I am so impressively intelligent and silver fingered. If you do the next thing you know you will be in some jungle drinking poisoned kool aid. I will start a cult, if I can't get people to think for themselves. There is good money in cults.

Good people, honest people, trustworthy people, intelligent people are often wrong. Remember back when e-mail was the thing and people sent forwards? Remember the" Hotmail will start charging", " they will deactivate your account if you do not forward this", "SUNSCREEN CAUSES BLINDNESS, wont somebody think of the children!!!!". Now we have similar things on facebook too but let’s use the e-mails as examples. All these were false. All these were sent to me by honest and trustworthy people yet they were false. These people assumed because they got them from honest, trustworthy and even intelligent people that they must have been true. After all honest people would not forward these. The people who sent these to them thought based on the exact same principle and all quickly pressed the forward button without looking it up and verifying it. After realizing how the chain worked I started to look stuff up.

There are people out there who knowingly deceive people. Are they evil? I don't know. I do know they are sometimes looking just for a little fun at our gullible expense. Sometimes they want our money and at other times they are trying to do something good and will lie to achieve it.

People tell little white lies for ideological reasons all the time. This very much includes Christians. I do not trust Christians at face value. They spread misinformation sometimes because they just heard it from someone they trust other times they think a little white lie will bring glory to God better than the truth. Here are a few examples: condoms don't prevent HIV, abstinence only (condoms are great at preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, so is abstinence, but abstinence is preferable to ideologues so they outright lie). Darwinists (term for a group of people who do not exist in reality) believe life started from nothing (if they mean evolutionary biologists, they lie. Evolutionary biologists do not officially care where life came from, just how it changed overtime). So there are some, of many lies, perpetuated by Christians for good causes. I picked a few obvious ones.

Don't trust in humans without question. I only trust in God fully because he is the only one worthy of it.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

FIrst Vlog!!!!

So, made a vlog. My accent in English has gtten atrocious and stuff but hope you like it. My face also looks super long and other self criticisms but I think I did pretty well. I used the abilities gained from talking to myself all the time so I felt pretty comfortable talking to the camera.


Monday, September 26, 2011

Love

Many times we forget the concept of love. It is a central principle of our faith but it seems like it is talked about very little at church. We Christians seem to skip over it as a kids lesson. It is alright for the little ones at children's church but not for us mature Christians. We like to deal in mature stuff like financial stewardship or church growth. Those topics maybe mature, and boring, but very much not important compared to love. ”And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

I see Christianity like the game of Othello. Easy to learn lifetime to master. Just like the game after we learn how Christianity works we just want to play, have fun and start mastering the game. Any player of any game like Othello and chess would tell you practicing the basics is key. Terrible is the chess player who does not have the basics down but knows the most complicated moves. We should still remember while reading my clever analogy that Christianity is not a game it is our lives and who we are. We don't need to win. It is not a game of who can be more holy. In fact one upping others in the Bible is frowned up on. It is said to be Pharisee like behavior of showing off.

Sometimes the holiest people know the value of simplicity the best. It is no secret that my husband is a Quaker and I, while not sure what I should label myself as, have definite Quaker sentiments. I love their adherence to peace, tolerance and the traditional value of simplicity. Love is simple, love is clear, love is joy, love is sacrifice when necessary. Love is the love of Jesus. I have confined my studies mostly, due to time constraints and possible ADD, to the life of Jesus. It has really taught me what is important. Love is important. Faith is important. Looking at the world through the lens of love makes knowing what would Jesus do way easier. What would Jesus do? Jesus would love.

I pray to love more and to act in love. It is something God has given to my heart to do. I could never love too much. I think Christians could use genuine non-self seeking love a whole lot more.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corintheans 13)