Quote:
Originally Posted by sigmadiva
The reason is because this extension of the olive branch does not happen in other aspects of life. So, its hard to believe the sincerity when it comes to NPC recruitment.
A personal example that happened to me over the past few weeks.
I love to needlepoint. My favorite hobby ever. I live in a city (Houston) with about 4 - 5 different needlepoint shops. Of these there is one that I consider my "home" shop. I can tell you that over the years that I have been going to that shop, since ~1999, I've been one of two Black women who frequent the shop. All the other customers and regulars are White.
Just a few weeks ago I decided to visit one of the other shops just to see if they had any great sales going on. I don't visit that particular shop often, maybe 2 - 3 times a year. So, I walk in the shop and every White woman in the shop just stops -dead frozen. The tension in the air became very high. As I was browsing around I could feel them looking at me, and quite frankly I got negative vibes. So much so, one of the women called her husband in to follow me around the shop. THIS IS A TINY PLACE!!
Now, what if I'd been a NPC member, and that woman who called her husband in was my sister. One shop member greeted me, but no one took the effort to do small talk with me. The moment I walked in the door they judged me purely on the basis of my skin.
Its wonderful that NPC pledges Black women, but that needs to be extended to other aspects of life.
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I am so sorry that happened to you. I wonder what they thought you were going to do: steal all their needles?
I agree wholeheartedly with your last paragraph, and I'm going to reassertion my earlier statement that there is truth on both sides here. Tokenism vs not seeing race.
No one doubts that carnation loves her children for being her children and not for their ethnicity. Carnation appears to me from her stories about her children to be an awesome and supportive mom. On the other hand, I don't know how many times in my life I've heard a white person say something disparaging about [insert race] as a whole and when questioned about a friendship or other relationship with a person of that race the white person says something along the lines of "well he/she isn't like the rest of them." I do not believe that carnation feels this way about her children, but I'm not going to pretend like other people don't feel this way.