Be honest, what do you think of when you hear “black people”?

Ah, Michael, Michael, Michael…

I see this has become a random word association task, and that it has spawned Be honest: what do you think of when you hear “white people”?

OK. Let’s see where this takes me.

• African-Americans.
• Not Africans. Not Jamaicans. Not Australian Aboriginals. If I see a Somali in town (our second-last refugee intake in Australia), I don’t think “black people”, I think “damn those Somalis are tall.”
• Negative media portrayals
• Being scared while in the hood in Memphis (correlated)
• Civil rights struggle
• All that awesome music. All of it.
• I know too few black people, offline or on
• The ones I have met were all awesome
• Including here
• Should really get around to reading more Langston Hughes one day
• Maya Angelou does not seem to be a good poet
• I keep thinking I’m going to be subconsciously racist around blacks
• Maybe I am, but I don’t think I’ve allowed anything to get out 🙂
• I need to know a LOT more about Frederick Douglass

Well, that was my stream of consciousness…

2 Comments

• John Cowan says:

  November 11, 2017 at 8:02 am

  Not that it’s a high bar or anything, but Maya Angelou is the best damn unofficial poet laureate we’ve ever had.

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  • opoudjis says:

    November 11, 2017 at 8:06 am

    … It really isn’t a high bar, is it? I haven’t read that much of either, but I’m pretty confident Angelou does not measure up to Hughes, for example.

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