In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Being White Is Hard

Jill

You know, those darkies are really ruining New York City when a nice white lady can’t go to the beach because she finds it disgusting, and when all those colored folks dirty up the public pools (before you know it, they’ll be letting them use our drinking fountains, too!).

To the Editor:

As a white woman who lived my first 18 years in the Inwood section of Manhattan and the past 13 years living in the Bronx, I’d like to say there are plenty of public places I cannot go based on my skin color.

There are no public pools I would feel comfortable in, and I have no desire to travel to a less desirable area to use one. I don’t go to Orchard Beach because it’s just disgusting. I can’t go to state parks, even those in Rockland and Northern Westchester Counties, because of the lack of security, noise and filth often created by those who reside in New York City.

So those who live in East Harlem may feel slighted because there are too many white people using the facilities at Randalls Island, but I have felt slighted my whole life in this city for the same reason. Only when you’re white, you’re not allowed to say anything, nor does anyone do anything about it. You just learn to deal with it.

Colleen Sussmann
Morris Park, the Bronx

Colleen, you’re welcome to move to Salt Lake City at any point.

via Gawker.

44 thoughts on Being White Is Hard

  1. “Being White is Hard”….but not as hard as say

    being President

    and of course

    being white and a evangelical Christian, well that is just intolerable.

  2. Colleen, it’s not the government who’s preventing you from going to the pool, it’s your psyche. Racism, however, is not a psychiatric disorder recognized by the APA, and as such cannot be classified as a disability requiring governmental accommodation.
    Suck. It. Up.

  3. Wow. Just wow. Was that in today’s paper? You must let us know if anyone bothers to respond to that one ’cause it’s just jaw-droppingly ignorant.

  8. KnifeGhost, I saw that story a while back. Another sick part is when she told him that the reason blacks were being sprayed with water hoses (during civil rights protests) was because they were hot!

  9. Another sick part is when she told him that the reason blacks were being sprayed with water hoses (during civil rights protests) was because they were hot!

    Oh, man. I guess they cut those dogs loose because the marchers loved animals.

  10. Does anyone know what article she was responding to? It sounds like it has to do with white people using Randall Island, but I’d be interested in seeing the article. Not that it would excuse her one bit.

  11. Qusan: That could be written off as general American unwillingness to talk about race and racism, but in the context of the rest of the article, it’s pretty chilling…..

  12. So those who live in East Harlem may feel slighted because there are too many white people using the facilities at Randalls Island

    Do you know what this refers to? I can’t get to the original article without a subscription.

  13. those who live in East Harlem may feel slighted because there are too many white people using the facilities at Randalls Island

    My gut reaction is that this woman has a problem but that quote does give me a pause. If the article she is responding to is about non-whites not wanting to go to a pool because of the number of whites, it puts a different spin on her letter. I hate quotes without context.

  14. Context! Getcher context!

    I don’t think an article about non-whites not wanting to go to a pool that’s fulla white people would put a significantly different spin on this letter – and if I spent as much time arguing about racism as I do arguing about feminism, I’d probably be sick of people bending over backward to come up with plausible excuses for blatant racism. But there’s no need to have that argument, ’cause the article provides no such excuse 🙂

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  18. Yeah, given the context, she just looks worse.

    Agreed. I’m sure responding to the article was just an excuse for her to say what she has wanted to for a long time.

  19. Being white may one day become hard indeed…

    While Colleen Sussmann’s letter may appear somewhat whiny and silly (kudos, though, for breaking a major taboo!), the underlying issue of race based no-go areas is no laughing matter. Not at all. We are losing the West — one block, one neighborhood, one city, one country at a time. Whites are basically a race in retreat, victims of the egalitarian-multicultural leftist disease that has paralyzed their minds with fear and false guilt. Only time will tell whether this is just a temporary phase, a crazy fad of sorts, or the end of a great civilization.

    Perhaps more so than any other contemporary ideology, bleeding heart, PC, multicultural leftism contains the seeds of its own destruction. It is a decadent perversion that can only exist in a prosperous, technologically advanced, reasonably liberal and tolerant culture. Western culture. If the commie wannabes had their way, and the West was ‘deconstructed’ into a multicultural-egalitarian (i.e. predominantly non-white) liberal ‘utopia’, cherished leftist values like gay, women’s, and ‘minority’ rights would be among the first to go, and the fagly liberals themselves would be oppressed, raped, and slaughtered without mercy by the very people they wished to ’empower’. Poetic justice, to be sure, only too bad we would all share their fate…

  20. Illuminatus, you have us all wrong. We “fagly liberals” are the ones that are going to impose a New World Order, break down your door, give your children and all your property to your wife, and force you to suck cock.

    Have a nice day.

  21. Ahem. Put her in Provo, please. At least half of we the Salt Lakers couldn’t bear to hear her whine.

    Didn’t mean to infer that Salt Lake City was racist — from what I’ve seen, ya’ll are lovely and kind people. I was just referring to the fact that, last I heard, it was the whitest city in the U.S.

    Illuminatus, you are off your damn rocker.

  23. Norbiz, you have yourself a product: Troll madlibs! If you can just write code that generates random troll fun based on any blog’s actual troll traffic, what a hoot! We could have Friday Random Troll!

  27. Dude, don’t you dare quote the fucking MATRIX on my blog.

    I’m probably defidient in some way but I liked the Matrix. I would never quote it myself though. It is just a movie!

  28. I hope that someday we Americans can talk about race without giving in to the urge to condemn anyone we disagree with as racist. Not only does that urge derail the conversation before it gets anywhere, but it comes across as smug and condescending.
    Does the lone black person at Randalls Island encounter hostility from white folks? My gut tells me yes.
    And does the lone white person in East Harlem encounter hostility from black folks? I don’t doubt it for a minute.
    This is a serious social problem and an obstacle to reaching a society free of racism. But it’s so much easier — and it makes us feel so superior — to make snide comments about sending her to Utah yuk yuk yuk.

  29. Mm. Maybe, though googling suggests otherwise (I’m seeing both MI suburbs , which might not really count, and Portland, which surprises me). Living where I do probably gives me a skewed view; this harpy wouldn’t last a day in my neighborhood, at least.

  30. So she’s taken what’s basically a territorial issue — East Harlemites feeling that Randall’s Island is being encroached upon by whites, even though it’s a park ostensibly serving the whole city and does have half the park space of Central Park — and turned it into a whine about how Those People are taking over all the beaches.

    Funny, I never really see tons of black folks hanging out in the Sheep Meadow.

  31. Does anyone else find the fact that the writer’s last name is SUSSMAN? And how say SIXTY YEARS AGO some folks could have written a similar letter directed towards & against her “tribe?”

    The letter could have been written in a less inflammatory tone, had it been re: the encroachment of “out-of-towners” in townie pools, beaches, facilities etc.; however, I doubt if WHITE out-of-towners would have been as sensational or titillating. The only thing lacking from her lovenote was the disclaimer statement: “I’m not a racist…”

    As a product of having lived my first 27 years at the Jersey Shore, of which is prone to New Yorkers (aka “Bennies”) invading the local beaches and attractions, and dealing with the congested roadways, the dirt/debris left behind etc., I say, “Shalom Aleichem and STFU!”

  32. And how say SIXTY YEARS AGO some folks could have written a similar letter directed towards & against her “tribe?”

    Yup. In the mid-’40s, my dad’s family, who were Jewish refugees from the Nazis, moved right near the neighborhood where she grew up. At the time, they were greeted with tons of hostility by their Irish neighbors. My dad has lots of stories about being chased around Washington Heights by Catholic school kids who were convinced he was a dirty Christ-killing commie. Irish-American folks claimed that Jews were destroying the neighborhood, but they forgot, or didn’t care, that people had said the same things about their parents and grandparents when they moved in. And then both the Irish and the Jews decided that the Dominicans were ruining the neighborhood. It seems like history endlessly repeats itself, right there in Inwood/ Washington Heights.

  33. last I heard, it was the whitest city in the U.S.

    It wouldn’t surprise me. I’m a Los Angeles native who moved up here for college a few years back. It’s shockingly white.

    Mormons had a lot of converts among the nordics. This place is full of Hansens, Jensens, Christiansens, etc. I also noticed the average heights. Among the women, the 5’7 to 5’11 range is common. Blondes everywhere. Over six feet is common for the guys. I’m 5’9, which is more average back in L.A., but up here I’m definitely on the short side.

  36. I don’t care what you quote as long as WE ARE NOT QUOTING THE MATRIX. I cannot be more firm on this point.

    OK, fairynuff. “Life is like a box of chocolates…IF YOU’RE A FUCKING RETARD.”

    If you want existential philosophy, you shouldn’t get it from a keanu reeves movie.

    Actually, I kinda agree with that.

  37. Lauren, I hope this is not a general criticism of Wachowski Brothers movies. I thought Bound was a cinematographic tour de force.

    Given your stated dislike of Kill Bill, if you didn’t like Bound I will be forced to conclude that our taste in films cannot be reconsiled.

  38. I can’t help it:

    Be excellent to each other. (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure)

    There is a bomb on your bus! (Speed)

    Sorry Lauren!

  40. Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a Muslim on a bus. Once the bus goes 50 miles an hour, the Muslim is armed. If it drops below 50, he blows up. What do you do? What do you do? (7/7)

  41. Lauren, I hope this is not a general criticism of Wachowski Brothers movies. I thought Bound was a cinematographic tour de force.

    Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

    That was the only time I ever liked Jennifer Tilly and Gena Gershon onscreen.

  42. Bound had lesbians. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. (When read aloud, this should have a half second pause between each heh.)

    Okay, I haven’t watched it.

    I cannot find anything more condescending (yet insipid) than the Matrix.

  43. This letter doesn’t seem too bad, to be honest. I think the woman’s problem is much more based on dispositions than she realizes. Many of the black students I see are a bit too overtly loud side for me to strike up a conversation with. I’ve chatted up many of my black classmates though, but if personalities are a function of cultural upbringing, and blacks and whites can have a very different cultural upbringing, and thus most of an ethnicity can have clashing personality types with another ethnicity, I can see where she’d have a grievance, if not a silly one.

    But, heck, might be that she’s just not used to black people, at which point I’d say “Get over it, you sub-conscious racist.”

    Then again, if she is calling the beach disgusting because of black people, rather than, say, anything the beach-goers are doing, then we might have a SERIOUS PROBLEM(tm).

  44. so, does ill think all of life is a movie or something? is he mad because he’s not even supposed to be here today, and he found out his girlfriend sucked 37 dicks?

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