Blackfolk (why's it called that, anyway?)

In my last entry, I mentioned I'm scared of black people. Well, I feel really weird having thrown that out there without saying a few words about it, so I'm going to. Yeah, I know I'm the only one that cares.

A few months ago, absolutcalm cross-posted a debate about Affirmative Action to both debate and blackfolk. I read the threads in debate, and decided they were completely asinine, so I hopped on over to blackfolk to see if there was more intelligent discussion there.

And lo and behold, there was! There was actually some very interesting debate, and I read it all...and somewhere in there people were talking about black hair care and how it's different from white hair care. Which made me go...uh? It is? Who'da thunk it?

Which is about the point that I added blackfolk to my friends list, because I figured, okay - I don't know what these people are talking about half the time, and I know that I'm freaked out unnecessarily by blacks, so let's add this and do something about both of those things, neh?

So I added it and figured I'd join debunkingwhite at some point when I had more time to read lj (it has since been added) and then I figured that gave me leave to dust off my hands and say to myself in a self-satisfactory manner, "Well, that's that!"

D'oh!

Recently, mau_x hit the scene, and well - a lot of people don't like what he has to say but you can say one thing for him - he's gotten some people to think. (I say some people, as I figure anything more generous than that is really giving the human race too much credit. Don't know what I mean? Read debate.)

So after reading some of the arguments people have gotten into over his posts, I've realized a few unsettling things:

- I've assumed that anyone on my friends list who hasn't explicitly stated their race/ethnicity is white. (Is anyone on my friends list not white and simply never bothered to mention it? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?)

- I've never added anyone I know to be black to my friends list. "But wait!" says my brain. "I've just never found anyone interesting enough to add!" Yes, you have and you still haven't. Besides, most of the time, if I see someone with, say, an icon of a black actor or something, I avoid checking them out. Oh. Right.

- Well, I added mau_x, actually. Troll or not, he's open about the fact that he doesn't like whites, and I'm more comfortable with that.

( So I was trying to figure out where this is coming from )