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Open Letter to Pam Dughi
Apr. 21st, 2005 03:21 pm...because I can never actually complete a full sentence IRL if you don't like what I'm saying. And you're not going to like this very much. But if you don't want me posting on LiveJournal, you could always let me get a word in edgewise to your face without either walking out or starting to yell so that someone else has to come over and shut us both up.
Ideally, what I would like is ten minutes in which you shut the hell up and I get to say my piece. For once in our years of having arguments, I would like to be able to complete a thought without you stepping on it. For once, I would like to get the last word. For once, I would like to determine when the argument ends by having me walk out. Just once. Then we can go ahead and never speak to each other again, I don't fucking care. But I would like JUST ONE FUCKING ARGUMENT in which I get to do most of the arguing, rather than you. You say scores and scores of things I don't like, that I think are nonsensical at best and deluded at worst (although there's not much of a difference there), and this time, I want to say my piece.
For the record, I did not bring up your comment from yesterday to try to make you look stupid. I brought it up because I looked up at the picture on the screen on the wall and went "Stereotypical? How?" I was, quite honestly, completely baffled beyond belief as to how that resembled the stereotype of the American Indian. Not "what you personally think of when someone mentions reservation life". The STEREOTYPE, and it takes more than one person to make a stereotype. It takes a culture. It takes a history. Our culture and history has a very definite stereotype of the American Indian, and I look at the American Indians on the screen and I see--no feathery headdresses, no warpaint, no buffalo running around in the background, guys wearing shirts. Do you now remember the Stereotypical Indian? Do you see that Smoke Signals isn't it?
Now, if Smoke Signals is, however, what you personally think of when someone mentions American Indians--congratulations, you have a relatively accurate concept of Indian reservations. One of not so many things you appear to have a particularly accurate concept of, and you call it a stereotype. "Indian=alcoholic" is a stereotype. "High rates of alcoholism plague Indian reservations" is a sociological fact. If you meet an American Indian and automatically assume they're an alcoholic, you're stereotyping them. But if you make a movie about an American Indian reservation and have nobody drink? That's like making a movie about America without money. Or making a movie about the twenties without alcohol. Or making a movie about the Irish without beer or whiskey. Or about the French without wine. In fact, there are a lot of demographics where alcohol plays a much bigger and more up-front role than in the very generic mainstream American culture.
And I think that, being only part of the generic mainstream American culture and not having any familial roots in any other ethnicity, you have missed something. You can claim that it prevents you from having any particular bias, but I think it just deprives you of understanding what it's like to have that alliance and to have those roots. The differences between big ethnic families, whether they're Irish, Italian, Jewish, Greek, Cuban, whatever, are slight compared to the difference between having a big ethnic family and having no family. The differences between the American Indians, the Irish, and the Jews are vast, and their standings in society today are vastly different, but if you're part of one you can understand the other two better than if you have no roots in any minority at all. And I think that's also why your comment pissed me off so much: I could draw too many parallels to that movie. The differences are great and the similarities are rather vague and conceptual, but there's enough there that if what's on the screen is a stereotype than my family and history are a stereotype too. And as stereotypes have a definite connotation as not being the same thing as reality and real people, I got rather offended. Political correctness would have us believe that there aren't really any differences between groups of people beyond the one that you're using to divide them into different groups. FALSE. Different groups of people are very different. That's okay. And that's what we should be teaching our kids, not that we're all the same. But yeah, when you marginalize groups of people they create a different culture and it's often not so pretty. Lower-income demographics are often rather big on smoking or drinking (or both). It's not a "stereotype"; it's statistics.
And while it's not my life (thank God)--the Irish are pretty much any other white people by now--it hasn't been that way for so long. I'm only a third-generation American; my grandfather was an immigrant and my father grew up in an all-Irish Catholic blue-collar community, so while I've grown up here that's not worlds away. My father's not an alcoholic--but my grandfather was, many of my family members were and are. Typical? Very. Stereotypes? No--real people, and my fucking family. The days of "No Irish Need Apply" are gone, but not that far gone. I grew up a free American, but my people were under British rule for 800 years, and many of them still are. This is what roots are--there's more than seventeen years of history running through my veins, and if anything in those 800 years that you'd previously heard of happens to show up in my life, I don't want anyone complaining that it's "stereotypical". You may know everything there is to know about movies, but I think I know a bit more about heritage since I'm the one that has one. So you just telling me "No, you're wrong" without an explanation because you can't come up with a definition for "stereotype" and then freaking out so we both get shut up before I can argue my case REALLY KIND OF RUBBED ME THE WRONG WAY.
I don't care if you're "sick of me" getting lazier and lazier about hiding the fact that I don't think you know what you're talking about much of the time. Honestly, you're sick of me? I'm sick to death of your egotistical, self-congratulatory rambles about nothing, and have been for a while, and that's why I've been being difficult. I'm sick of only you getting to be difficult, so I'm being difficult. I'm sick of you being allowed to disagree with me and me not being allowed to disagree with you, so I'm trying to actually get my opinions across when I disagree with you. The only caveat is that I have to do it in a way where you don't realize I'm disagreeing with you, or you flip shit like you did this afternoon. YEAH, I THOUGHT YOU WERE WRONG. Big deal. You tell me I'm wrong all the time, I would like to be able to return the courtesy. Otherwise, for all your smug self-assessments that "you'll go 50% of the way for people if they go 50%", you basically own the friendship (if you want to call it that). And you have, and I'm not sure how I ended up putting up with it again... but as my father said about one of my aunts, I'll go 90% of the way for someone if they'll meet me at that 10%. But you don't give that 10%. It's your way or the highway. And I'm sick to death of your way, sick to death of you always up on your high horse with your head in the clouds pretending you have any understanding of what's going on down here on the ground in the real world, so the highway it is. GOODBYE.
Ideally, what I would like is ten minutes in which you shut the hell up and I get to say my piece. For once in our years of having arguments, I would like to be able to complete a thought without you stepping on it. For once, I would like to get the last word. For once, I would like to determine when the argument ends by having me walk out. Just once. Then we can go ahead and never speak to each other again, I don't fucking care. But I would like JUST ONE FUCKING ARGUMENT in which I get to do most of the arguing, rather than you. You say scores and scores of things I don't like, that I think are nonsensical at best and deluded at worst (although there's not much of a difference there), and this time, I want to say my piece.
For the record, I did not bring up your comment from yesterday to try to make you look stupid. I brought it up because I looked up at the picture on the screen on the wall and went "Stereotypical? How?" I was, quite honestly, completely baffled beyond belief as to how that resembled the stereotype of the American Indian. Not "what you personally think of when someone mentions reservation life". The STEREOTYPE, and it takes more than one person to make a stereotype. It takes a culture. It takes a history. Our culture and history has a very definite stereotype of the American Indian, and I look at the American Indians on the screen and I see--no feathery headdresses, no warpaint, no buffalo running around in the background, guys wearing shirts. Do you now remember the Stereotypical Indian? Do you see that Smoke Signals isn't it?
Now, if Smoke Signals is, however, what you personally think of when someone mentions American Indians--congratulations, you have a relatively accurate concept of Indian reservations. One of not so many things you appear to have a particularly accurate concept of, and you call it a stereotype. "Indian=alcoholic" is a stereotype. "High rates of alcoholism plague Indian reservations" is a sociological fact. If you meet an American Indian and automatically assume they're an alcoholic, you're stereotyping them. But if you make a movie about an American Indian reservation and have nobody drink? That's like making a movie about America without money. Or making a movie about the twenties without alcohol. Or making a movie about the Irish without beer or whiskey. Or about the French without wine. In fact, there are a lot of demographics where alcohol plays a much bigger and more up-front role than in the very generic mainstream American culture.
And I think that, being only part of the generic mainstream American culture and not having any familial roots in any other ethnicity, you have missed something. You can claim that it prevents you from having any particular bias, but I think it just deprives you of understanding what it's like to have that alliance and to have those roots. The differences between big ethnic families, whether they're Irish, Italian, Jewish, Greek, Cuban, whatever, are slight compared to the difference between having a big ethnic family and having no family. The differences between the American Indians, the Irish, and the Jews are vast, and their standings in society today are vastly different, but if you're part of one you can understand the other two better than if you have no roots in any minority at all. And I think that's also why your comment pissed me off so much: I could draw too many parallels to that movie. The differences are great and the similarities are rather vague and conceptual, but there's enough there that if what's on the screen is a stereotype than my family and history are a stereotype too. And as stereotypes have a definite connotation as not being the same thing as reality and real people, I got rather offended. Political correctness would have us believe that there aren't really any differences between groups of people beyond the one that you're using to divide them into different groups. FALSE. Different groups of people are very different. That's okay. And that's what we should be teaching our kids, not that we're all the same. But yeah, when you marginalize groups of people they create a different culture and it's often not so pretty. Lower-income demographics are often rather big on smoking or drinking (or both). It's not a "stereotype"; it's statistics.
And while it's not my life (thank God)--the Irish are pretty much any other white people by now--it hasn't been that way for so long. I'm only a third-generation American; my grandfather was an immigrant and my father grew up in an all-Irish Catholic blue-collar community, so while I've grown up here that's not worlds away. My father's not an alcoholic--but my grandfather was, many of my family members were and are. Typical? Very. Stereotypes? No--real people, and my fucking family. The days of "No Irish Need Apply" are gone, but not that far gone. I grew up a free American, but my people were under British rule for 800 years, and many of them still are. This is what roots are--there's more than seventeen years of history running through my veins, and if anything in those 800 years that you'd previously heard of happens to show up in my life, I don't want anyone complaining that it's "stereotypical". You may know everything there is to know about movies, but I think I know a bit more about heritage since I'm the one that has one. So you just telling me "No, you're wrong" without an explanation because you can't come up with a definition for "stereotype" and then freaking out so we both get shut up before I can argue my case REALLY KIND OF RUBBED ME THE WRONG WAY.
I don't care if you're "sick of me" getting lazier and lazier about hiding the fact that I don't think you know what you're talking about much of the time. Honestly, you're sick of me? I'm sick to death of your egotistical, self-congratulatory rambles about nothing, and have been for a while, and that's why I've been being difficult. I'm sick of only you getting to be difficult, so I'm being difficult. I'm sick of you being allowed to disagree with me and me not being allowed to disagree with you, so I'm trying to actually get my opinions across when I disagree with you. The only caveat is that I have to do it in a way where you don't realize I'm disagreeing with you, or you flip shit like you did this afternoon. YEAH, I THOUGHT YOU WERE WRONG. Big deal. You tell me I'm wrong all the time, I would like to be able to return the courtesy. Otherwise, for all your smug self-assessments that "you'll go 50% of the way for people if they go 50%", you basically own the friendship (if you want to call it that). And you have, and I'm not sure how I ended up putting up with it again... but as my father said about one of my aunts, I'll go 90% of the way for someone if they'll meet me at that 10%. But you don't give that 10%. It's your way or the highway. And I'm sick to death of your way, sick to death of you always up on your high horse with your head in the clouds pretending you have any understanding of what's going on down here on the ground in the real world, so the highway it is. GOODBYE.