Race bending in Second Life

[Aislin Ceawlin]

22 hours ago, AmandaKeen said:

Y'know, when I was 18 I decided to really annoy my parents.  I completely skipped out on their "program" for my life (college/family/slow insanity) and enlisted in the US Military.

Embedded EVERYWHERE in my training was the direction that I was not compelled to follow any Unlawful Order.  Unlawful Orders being defined as "heinous crimes against humanity, attacking helpless civilians....." the kind of stuff you'd never want your military to do unless you WANT an evil military.  I was very clear that if I ever decided to follow an order to do something evil; it as on ME and "I was just following orders" was no defense. That's not Hollywood; that was real-life.

The military also gave me a high expectation for my personal conduct and that of those who reported to me. It STRONGLY embedded the concept that my DUTY was to question authority under certain circumstances.

Does that always work; No.  That's because there will always be some asshat or weak-willed person who decides to use the chaos of conflict to do something evil, and then try to rationalize it by claiming they were "just following orders".

But that's not how I was trained.

Thank you, Amanda! I was going to post something along the same line. I had the same experience.

[clivesteel]

On 22 June 2017 at 2:49 PM, LittleMe Jewell said:

 

I see no predictions in anything you wrote above.

Then you are WILFULLY IGNORANT you patronizing, evil buffoon - any DECENT, RIGHT-MINDED mod would have locked and deleted this sick thread straight after my first post warning you of the consequences. I knew this would happen....

...and hey presto, the blackface apologists, casual Klansmen and outright sieg-heiling white supremacists have descended like a cloud of locusts to continue this thread's downward trajectory into the cesspit... LINDEN LAB SHOULD BE BANNING AND BLOCKING FOLK LEFT, RIGHT AND CENTRE BASED ON THE FILTH WRITTEN HERE- AND IN THE OLD DAYS, WHEN GAVIN RAN LL, THEY WOULD HAVE. 

Where are the mods anyway? Given up? Run off to Blue Mars? Burning crosses? Shooting up? 

"Buh-buh-but huh huh Beavis - remember them ol' Patriotic Nigras -huh huh, pretty representative of the black fellas, huh? No offence in it...huh huh, dork, them ol' PNs...black people cause all the trouble on SL..kuh-kuh-kewl..pool's closed, huh huh...bill cosby cubes at dawn...dork snot dribble puke.."

Sickening, nauseating thread. Ebbe - prove you have one shred of decency in your carcass and nuke this entire thread.

[clivesteel]

On 22 June 2017 at 3:05 PM, Skell Dagger said:

Clive is so amusing, bless him.
People commit FILTHY DEEDS in SL!

So you would describe a dirty sim offering pedophilia as entertainment (which was the context of that quote) - and which LL RIGHTLY banned -  as...what exactly?

Bit of harmless fun?

Jog on, joker...

Edited June 26, 2017 by clivesteel

[Talligurl]

1 hour ago, clivesteel said:

So you would describe a dirty sim offering pedophilia as entertainment (which was the context of that quote) - and which LL RIGHTLY banned -  as...what exactly?

Bit of harmless fun?

Jog on, joker...

Ok, so a sim offering pedophilia, isn't harmless fun, which is why it was banned, but you brought that into a discussion on race bending, which could be taken to mean you place a person using an avatar that represents a race other then their own, on the same level as pedophilia. Which I suppose in certain contexts it might be pretty bad, but certainly not in all contexts, but you seem to have a difficult time grasping that.

[Aislin Ceawlin]

13 hours ago, clivesteel said:

So you would describe a dirty sim offering pedophilia as entertainment (which was the context of that quote) - and which LL RIGHTLY banned -  as...what exactly?

Bit of harmless fun?

Jog on, joker...

 

[Ceka Cianci]

57 minutes ago, Aislin Ceawlin said:

 

I'm thinking it was about something from like a decade ago..

When reading starts to hurt,I just send loud stuff back to even things out..hehehe

 

[LittleMe Jewell]

15 hours ago, clivesteel said:

... Some lunatic comments

blah blah blah

more lunatic comments

 

[Skell Dagger]

20 hours ago, clivesteel said:

... some crazy stuff ...

[Amanda Crisp]

I see this still going round and round and people still demanding that SL be absolutely forced to mirror RL.

That means in SL I am supposed to have the disability that constrains me in RL?

There is this social app called Tind-something that allows people to Meat-Market their RL selves. Perhaps that would be a better venue for the Digital Realists than SL? Voluntarily of course as I am not "keen" on forcing anyone to participate in anything against their will.

:-)

[Anja Medier]

I do not understand why there are people who give so much importance to the color of the skin, and what others may think.

The day you show me that your blood is NOT red ... then I'll talk about your skin color or race.

[earthgirlkelli]

I do it all the time and as far as I know its never offended anyone, and its very easy to tell Im white from my real world profile picture. 

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 6/24/2017 at 4:32 PM, AmandaKeen said:

Y'know, when I was 18 I decided to really annoy my parents.  I completely skipped out on their "program" for my life (college/family/slow insanity) and enlisted in the US Military.

Embedded EVERYWHERE in my training was the direction that I was not compelled to follow any Unlawful Order.  Unlawful Orders being defined as "heinous crimes against humanity, attacking helpless civilians....." the kind of stuff you'd never want your military to do unless you WANT an evil military.  I was very clear that if I ever decided to follow an order to do something evil; it as on ME and "I was just following orders" was no defense. That's not Hollywood; that was real-life.

The military also gave me a high expectation for my personal conduct and that of those who reported to me. It STRONGLY embedded the concept that my DUTY was to question authority under certain circumstances.

Does that always work; No.  That's because there will always be some asshat or weak-willed person who decides to use the chaos of conflict to do something evil, and then try to rationalize it by claiming they were "just following orders".

But that's not how I was trained.

I will second (or third or whatever) this. I recall the exact same training.

Followed this up at university by the way with some concrete examples.

In an international law class on the European Court we went over a case of a Serbian soldier ordered to kill some muslim men. He was the third guy to refuse the order. The other two had just been shot and killed by his commander right in front of him... He was threatened with the same... and then complied. He killed 5 muslim captives.

The court found him guilty of a war crime.

A soldier MUST disobey an unlawful order - even when doing so means their own death.

He was, as a mitigating factor, a draftee. He did not want to serve to begin with.

We debated for an hour over this - and I was the only one there who agreed with the sentence. As a veteran, I know the duty. The civilians felt he should have been let off - half of them just because of the threat of his death, the other half because he was drafted.

But for me, if there was an unlawful order that he should have disobeyed to avoid this situation, it was complying with being drafted. Once he was out there serving as a soldier, he was subject to the rules of international law.

- And that is where this rule about unlawful orders comes from. It is from the Geneva conventions. The US is bound to it by treaty law - which is higher than any other law until the moment Congress votes in a law to reject a treaty it had previously passed.

 

Edited July 3, 2017 by Pussycat Catnap

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 6/23/2017 at 6:04 AM, Kristen Beornssen said:

Also, with the recent rise in DNA testing, black people are more keen than ever to learn about our pre-slavery history and reconnect with our roots. Which is why Genealogy tours are more popular than ever in the states. We know that not all of our ancestors were kings, queens, and great warriors - you are referring to a subset of people in our culture who are considered "extremist" or "afrocentric' in their viewpoint, so you shouldn't generalize black people as whole. We are not a monolith, so we do not all think the same, nor do we all believe the same things.

I need to find out about those. My mother had a DNA test and I recall seeing on a map a small 500sq-mile part of Nigeria where I have roots from her side. I need to get my own DNA test done because I saw a photo of my Paternal Grandmother for the first time recently (passed away before I was born - grandparents had my father very late in life) and that nose she has... explains my own nose... but also only comes from one continent.

I roughly identify as mulatto - and the family story would place me as a Chinese / Quechua mix on one side, and Irish / Cherokee / Portuguese on the other. But DNA has told us that 'Irish' comes from Sweden, the Cherokee from Nigeria and Afghanistan... and the Portuguese comes from Morocco.

Somebody got some 'splain'n to do, if they were still alive... One half of my ancestry was a complete lie. There's a mystery great-grandparent in there (great-grandmother threw my grandmother into an orphanage at birth and refused to ID the father), but even that isn't enough to explain it.

This puts me in the awkward position in the last few years of finding ancestry among a set of people I had a deep fondness for but thought I had no connection to, and yet also finding I have no ancestry among a set of people I had felt a kinship to and desired to find connections with.

 

On 6/23/2017 at 6:04 AM, Kristen Beornssen said:

The truth of the matter is, black people (and the majority of humankind) originate from Africa, that is a proven scientific fact. Whether you choose to take issue with that or not is your business, but you can't dictate to others as to what they should label themselves.

A people always have a right to name themselves. No one else can ever have the right to pick their name for them.

 

Edited July 3, 2017 by Pussycat Catnap

[Theresa Tennyson]

15 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I roughly identify as mulatto - and the family story would place me as a Chinese / Quechua mix on one side, and Irish / Cherokee / Portuguese on the other. But DNA has told us that 'Irish' comes from Sweden, the Cherokee from Nigeria and Afghanistan... and the Portuguese comes from Morocco.

Somebody got some 'splain'n to do, if they were still alive... One half of my ancestry was a complete lie. There's a mystery great-grandparent in there (great-grandmother threw my grandmother into an orphanage at birth and refused to ID the father), but even that isn't enough to explain it.

This puts me in the awkward position in the last few years of finding ancestry among a set of people I had a deep fondness for but thought I had no connection to, and yet also finding I have no ancestry among a set of people I had felt a kinship to and desired to find connections with.

 

Don't discard the possibility that the "lies" about your ancestry may in fact be coming from the people who say they can pinpoint people's exact ancestry from genetic material.

http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/DNA-Fact-or-Science-Fiction

[Pussycat Catnap]

On 6/22/2017 at 9:43 AM, Dusky Jewell said:

I strongly believe that anyone can be anything in SL, however I don't like the cringe-worthy, sexual objectifying of black men and women in SL by people that are role-playing as black "bulls", rapists, thug and black thot/hoe/***** stereotypes, and a variety of other bizarre interracial porn fantasies. I doubt that the majority of those type of avatars are controlled by real black people. Wearing a black skin in SL is not black face, unless you are choosing to wear a black avatar in a derogatory fashion with the intent to hurt us.

My experience everytime I went to an 'interracial' sim in SL.

Being mixed, before I came to SL, the word 'interracial' to me just meant myself and those like me...

I had no idea it was a kind of racist porn involving white women pretending to be raped by black men...

Now that I see that form of porn all over SL... it's quite disturbing.

And as someone on a black avatar, who is also almost always nude in SL... I worry about being wrapped up in seen as a part of it... I suspect this is played a part in turning me 'off' of the 'SL sex' scene. One of several reasons...

The people in such venues also use a kind of 'fake ebonics / jive' blend talk that is just disgusting to see scroll past on my chat bar...

At least once when someone was lining up an attack on me, I was linked with that - but clearly from someone who didn't even know me, as they stated they hated those people that 'talk funny and act gangster' or something like that...

 

SL does take to an extreme the issue that happens in RL, which in RL I encounter as an 'hispanic / mulatto' appearing person - that people of color are judged as a category and people who are Caucasian appearing get judged individually for their own conduct and traits.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

5 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

Don't discard the possibility that the "lies" about your ancestry may in fact be coming from the people who say they can pinpoint people's exact ancestry from genetic material.

http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/DNA-Fact-or-Science-Fiction

Yes I have been paying attention to that too. Apparently many Native American people 'fail' to show any Native ancestry on some of these tests due to lack of data points. So it is possible I have Cherokee... but I now consider the amount likely to be so small that it would be unjust to cultural Cherokee for me to claim it.

The link you provide however, just notes that the details are overstated. It might be unlikely that they can say the 500sq-mile spot in Nigeria part of me is from (but not impossible - if that area is sufficiently outside of major trade routes, which is true for some parts of Nigeria), they CAN be pretty sure that ancestor was from somewhere in Nigeria.

 

[Talligurl]

Another issue with the whole where in the world am I from thing, is that the farther back you go the more ancestors you have, it typically doubles with each generation you go back (not always if anyone marries a cousin, and don't kid yourself somewhere in you family tree you have cousins who married) You have two parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grandparents. Obviously before long that number is huge, so you have DNA that says you have an ancestor from a particular spot, but that could be only a tiny percentage of all your ancestors, so what is that worth anyway?

[Destiny Marques]

7 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

I need to find out about those. My mother had a DNA test and I recall seeing on a map a small 500sq-mile part of Nigeria where I have roots from her side. I need to get my own DNA test done because I saw a photo of my Paternal Grandmother for the first time recently (passed away before I was born - grandparents had my father very late in life) and that nose she has... explains my own nose... but also only comes from one continent.

I roughly identify as mulatto - and the family story would place me as a Chinese / Quechua mix on one side, and Irish / Cherokee / Portuguese on the other. But DNA has told us that 'Irish' comes from Sweden, the Cherokee from Nigeria and Afghanistan... and the Portuguese comes from Morocco.

Somebody got some 'splain'n to do, if they were still alive... One half of my ancestry was a complete lie. There's a mystery great-grandparent in there (great-grandmother threw my grandmother into an orphanage at birth and refused to ID the father), but even that isn't enough to explain it.

This puts me in the awkward position in the last few years of finding ancestry among a set of people I had a deep fondness for but thought I had no connection to, and yet also finding I have no ancestry among a set of people I had felt a kinship to and desired to find connections with.

 

A people always have a right to name themselves. No one else can ever have the right to pick their name for them.

 

The first question that came to mind while reading your post was - Are you a multi-generational American? I ask because as you know, with us being people of color, there was a lot of mixing and "passing" going on back in the day. So despite some of the flaws with DNA testing, it is quite possible that you could have African ancestry if one or more of your ancestors were the offspring of a slave and their master, or the product of some other interracial union involving someone of African descent.

Most of the time a lot of people who were black, but didn't outwardly present as black, purposely hid their true racial identity for safety reasons, and this sometimes went on for generations. If they happened to have a slightly or moderately tanned hue to their skin, it was often explained away as being of "Cherokee blood" in origin. I know personally, on my dad's side of the family, we had a lot of "white passing" ancestors" who were actually black and lived their lives as such, to avoid the pitfalls which befell other blacks who could not outwardly hide their race - so I would definitely look a bit deeper and research where that Nigerian ancestry possibly came from, because you might find out something similar happened to what I've described above.

I would like to get a DNA test done, because my family on both sides claim that we are "part Cherokee" or some other Native American tribe, along with Irish, English, African, Spanish, French, and lord only knows what else. LOL We are Creole, so I guess it's possible that we are a bit of everything that passed through Louisiana and it's neighboring states. All I know for sure, is that my family tree is a hodgepodge of different races and ethnicities, but we identify as "black" or "black Creoles".

If you feel that a DNA test will benefit you in some way and maybe put to rest some questions that you have about your ancestry, then go for it. It's a personal decision to do so, and no one else make that choice for you. So you'll either end up really happy you did it, or it may open up Pandora's box to more questions. Things such as this can go either way.

[Pussycat Catnap]

24 minutes ago, Kristen Beornssen said:

The first question that came to mind while reading your post was - Are you a multi-generational American? I ask because as you know, with us being people of color, there was a lot of mixing and "passing" going on back in the day. So despite some of the flaws with DNA testing, it is quite possible that you could have African ancestry if one or more of your ancestors were the offspring of a slave and their master, or the product of some other interracial union involving someone of African descent.

Most of the time a lot of people who were black, but didn't outwardly present as black, purposely hid their true racial identity for safety reasons, and this sometimes went on for generations. If they happened to have a slightly or moderately tanned hue to their skin, it was often explained away as being of "Cherokee blood" in origin.

One side of my family has been here and been backwoods long enough to not know when they got here. This is the side who's family story almost completely fails to match our DNA. Given what part of the US these folks lived in before the 1930s - I would not be surprised if some generations back somebody 'hid' and married out... These folks were deeply racist, and the ones still 'back in Appalachia' that we found not long back, still are... If I ran down the list of the people they hate, and then the list of what DNA says they are - there's a very strong correlation, not just with the African parts too... And yes, they claim to be Irish/Cherokee... Some few years back I even got into a months long argument on the SL forums with someone over why a Cherokee might not be 'listed' on the native registry but still be Cherokee. The DNA results of 2 years ago for me, sadly tell me the reason was not the one I had been told...

 

The other side is one generation removed from South America (Quechua are mountain Amazons related to the Inca) and one more from China. This side of my family also hides lineage because being listed as a Quechua Indian can STILL get you targeted by the government down there. But now that I see my grandmother - the story of her being Quechua itself seems fuzzy. I suspect she is the one thing that would have been worse here, but better there: black and Indian together. Parts of South America explain ALL of their social problems with 3 words: too many Indians. Social programs often up with one plan: get rid of some indians.

Mysteries could be in store on both ends.

I grew up in Chicano inner city hoods - and I look more or less latina / mulatto. So I tended to get grouped with them by outsiders and police. By my teens a lot of Central and South Americans were moving in - people I should be 'connected to', but to whom I was culturally cut off from.

[Ivanova Shostakovich]

26 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

One side of my family has been here and been backwoods long enough to not know when they got here. This is the side who's family story almost completely fails to match our DNA. Given what part of the US these folks lived in before the 1930s - I would not be surprised if some generations back somebody 'hid' and married out... These folks were deeply racist, and the ones still 'back in Appalachia' that we found not long back, still are... If I ran down the list of the people they hate, and then the list of what DNA says they are - there's a very strong correlation, not just with the African parts too... And yes, they claim to be Irish/Cherokee... Some few years back I even got into a months long argument on the SL forums with someone over why a Cherokee might not be 'listed' on the native registry but still be Cherokee. The DNA results of 2 years ago for me, sadly tell me the reason was not the one I had been told...

 

The other side is one generation removed from South America (Quechua are mountain Amazons related to the Inca) and one more from China. This side of my family also hides lineage because being listed as a Quechua Indian can STILL get you targeted by the government down there. But now that I see my grandmother - the story of her being Quechua itself seems fuzzy. I suspect she is the one thing that would have been worse here, but better there: black and Indian together. Parts of South America explain ALL of their social problems with 3 words: too many Indians. Social programs often up with one plan: get rid of some indians.

Mysteries could be in store on both ends.

I grew up in Chicano inner city hoods - and I look more or less latina / mulatto. So I tended to get grouped with them by outsiders and police. By my teens a lot of Central and South Americans were moving in - people I should be 'connected to', but to whom I was culturally cut off from.

   So you're saying you're mysterious. Mysterious is good.

[Aislin Ceawlin]

9 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

people who are Caucasian appearing get judged individually for their own conduct and traits.

 

Unless you happen to be a "ginger", lol

[Amanda Crisp]

11 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

SL does take to an extreme the issue that happens in RL, which in RL I encounter as an 'hispanic / mulatto' appearing person - that people of color are judged as a category and people who are Caucasian appearing get judged individually for their own conduct and traits.

 

If you're Caucasian and you have to look into the misdeeds of other Caucasians deeply enough, you start being mistrustful of them too. My big problem is that I really don't trust most *people* much any more; I've seen the aftermath of what people who "look like me" can do when we're behaving badly, and it was just as barbaric as anyone else's barbarity.

That's a bad place to be in, because it leaves you isolated and in SL way too much :-) Pixel-people are somehow less threatening.

Edited July 4, 2017 by AmandaKeen

[Rasia Silvershade]

We are all human regardless of color or gender. Be nice to me and I will be nice to you.

[ChinRey]

12 hours ago, Talligurl said:

Another issue with the whole where in the world am I from thing, is that the farther back you go the more ancestors you have, it typically doubles with each generation you go back (not always if anyone marries a cousin, and don't kid yourself somewhere in you family tree you have cousins who married) You have two parents, 4 grand parents, 8 great grandparents.

... and 64 great-great-great-great grandparents. Genes come bundled in 46 chromosones plus some mithocondrial dna that is always passed on from the mother. So although it's possible, it is very unlikely that you have genes from all you ancestors six generations away.

[Aislin Ceawlin]

3 hours ago, ChinRey said:

... and 64 great-great-great-great grandparents. Genes come bundled in 46 chromosones plus some mithocondrial dna that is always passed on from the mother. So although it's possible, it is very unlikely that you have genes from all you ancestors six generations away.

My great grandfather (Xs 10) was Stephen Hopkins who brought his family over on the Mayflower. Now, seeing as how that's 10 Xs, there are thousands of others who are also descended from him and his boodles of children. This is a list of the famous people descended from him, and I have never been invited to Thanksgiving dinner by ANY of these bastards, lmao! 

Robert Treat Paine

Signer of the Declaration of Independence

3rd great-grandson

 

Levi Parsons Morton

22nd U.S. Vice-President

5th great-grandson

 

Charles Dawes

30th U.S. Vice-President

7th great-grandson

 

William Rufus Day

36th U.S. Secretary of State

7th great-grandson

 

Richard Gere

Movie Actor

9th great-grandson

 

Norman Rockwell

American Artist

9th great-grandson

 

Tennessee Williams

Author of A Streetcar Named Desire

10th great-grandson

 

Taylor Swift

Singer and Songwriter

11th great-granddaughter

 

Howard Dean

79th Governor of Vermont

11th great-grandson

 

Sarah Palin

9th Governor of Alaska

11th great-granddaughter

 

Anna Gunn

TV and Movie Actress

11th great-granddaughter

 

Avril Lavigne

Singer and Songwriter

12th great-granddaughter