What happened to Nopper by her seatmate is outrageous, and most likely sexists.

She really doesn't give us enough details about why the SWA reps laughed at her. Were they laughing at her, or with her.

When you examine her other writings on the net, the woman is an unhinged racist who sees evil in ALL white people, including you Jessica.

http://racetraitor.org/nopper.html

I would not be surprised to find that she misinterpreted her seatmate's reaction, SWA's reaction, or is just lying to foment anger and draw attention to herself.

"If you are past your early twenties, and you're single and want to have children, you need to find a partner now.

My goodness, what a brilliant idea! Find a partner! Despite my longstanding desire to have children, I'd never though of that before! Thank goodness this article is here to show me the way! I kept meeting hordes of wonderful men and women to whom I was attracted and who were attracted to me, with whom I shared goals and perspectives on the world and could live together happily, who were ready to have children, and it never occurred to me to have a baby with one of them! That's the solution I've been looking for! I'll get right on that!

And...your ovaries won't outlast your career? But what, my career can be put on indefinite hold? Like, if I had taken two or seven years off from graduate school in order to have kids, I'd have a tenure-track job at the school of my dreams now, no problem? Or if I do it now, my tenure chances won't be affected?

Somehow it's the job of individual women to compensate for the fact that we have an institutionalized career cycle built around the life of the 1950s man which just so happens to place the time when one has to work hardest during the best child-bearing years for women? It's a systemic problem, one that won't be fixed by me spreading my legs for some guy I don't much like just in order to get knocked up.

Wow, the story about Southwest Airlines was fucked up. If I was on that flight I would have allied myself with the author. That dude shouldve been escorted OFF the plane. However, I did find some of her comments racist and distorted. Whats even more annoying is she seems to glump all white people into a mold of weird rules and outlooks. She seems to insinuate that currently considered white poeple (who were not condsidered white in the past) have the same outlook as those that were considered white in 1950s America. Personally I prefer to identify along culture lines than color of skin. I prefer to see people along cultural lines, ie Italian, Jewish, Egyptian, African ect. so its more individualized. I hate to group people by skin color.

That NYT article...I don't even know where to begin.

*headdesk*

I'll be 25 in June, so, I guess I should just forget about all that money I spent on an IUD and get with the baby making, huh?

That NYT article...I don't even know where to begin.

*headdesk*

I just want to say, about the babies first, career later article, that it didn't come off overtly sexist to me. I didn't LIKE the article, especially not the commanding tone it had, and it's up for debate whether the advice is actually good ("get a partner now" isn't very helpful, for one thing), but given that it admitted that having kids throws off a woman's career and directed its advice at women who want children, not just women in general, I think the author was just trying to be realistic and helpful. I agree with EG that there's a systemic problem making the work/family balance hard for women, but as long as the problem exists, women need to strategize to make it work as well as they can. I just saw this as strategy. Am I just being naive?

She really doesn't give us enough details about why the SWA reps laughed at her. Were they laughing at her, or with her.

Really? She seems to make it pretty damned clear that she wasn't, in fact laughing about anything. How would that look? "Oh, say, this guy grabbed me and threatened to smack me in the face! Isn't that hill-are-ee-us?"?

When you examine her other writings on the net, the woman is an unhinged racist who sees evil in ALL white people, including you Jessica.

Even if true, that would negate her experiences in that story... how?

Personally I prefer to identify along culture lines than color of skin. I prefer to see people along cultural lines, ie Italian, Jewish, Egyptian, African ect. so its more individualized. I hate to group people by skin color.

"African" is not a cultural line. "Africa" is not a country, nor is it a single monolithic culture. You lumped the entire African continent as one cultural line as though it's the same as talking about "Italian" cultural lines. Africa is a pretty damned big continent, and it's made up of 53 seperate countries, 900+ million people, and makes up about 20% of the total land-mass of the planet. As it happens, there are some pretty significant cultural differences that exist within the African continent.

She never says she hates white people, just that she'd like them to shut the fuck up and stop trying to take leading positions in her struggle, assuming that they're the smartest and most capable people in the room full of anti-racists because they're white. I am white, and I agree with her. This is exactly like requesting that men identify as pro-feminist rather than feminist and that they try not to dominate the feminist struggle. Anarchists with dreads actually are really annoying.

It's interesting that this woman points out that people of color requesting equal rights are perceived as somehow being anti-white... only to have a bunch of white people go on about how reverse racist she is or some shit. Would you people also argue that rad-fems are anti-man?

Judgesnineteen, yes. This article is saying that to prioritize your career is "horrible advice." This article assumes that women who want babies must find partners immediately, as if adoption was not a possibility. This article is a blatant attempt to scare women into thinking that they can never ever have babies if they try to have a career.

When you examine her other writings on the net, the woman is an unhinged racist who sees evil in ALL white people, including you Jessica.

Even if true, that would negate her experiences in that story... how?

Because I don't trust racists not to lie about these sorts of issues. Do you?

Sorry Sera, people of color can certainly be racists and there is no reason to think that all "white" people are racists. And to think so, well, that's the definition of racism. Take it elsewhere please, I belong to a movement that tries to move human rights forward and believes that all people are created equal, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual identification, bmi, age, or disability.

The Southwest Airlines article was very, very interesting. I experienced something similar when flying (and was much less brave about it).

As for those commenters who believe that Tamala Nopper is racist, even though I'm white, I have to agree with her assessments.

I've never done or said anything racist in my life. However, I do benefit by being white. This something that I barely think about, let alone fight because of its inherent unfairness. I don't walk into offices or classroom wondering if I'll be the only white person there. I have never had racial epithets hurled at me and had to deal with the emotional aftermath of them. I don't have to face the 100 little things a day that smack of the unfairness of racism. (Sexism? Yes, but not racism, nor racism and sexism combined.)

While I'm not racist in my actions, the fact that I don't act and fight a world that privileges me unfairly, along with the fact that I rarely even see where I am privileged, is racist. I do try to work to see it, but I'm not even close.

Does it hurt to be painted with the same brush used against terrible people who overtly discriminate against other races? Sure. But in the end, I still have privileges that others don't. And if calling me a racist exposes this unfairness, I'll take the label.

An article advising women to jump off the career track and get knocked up might want to take into account what will happen to about 50% of those same women 10-20 years down the road (statistically speaking) when they wind up divorced and with no career, or a career that has been sidelined to the point where it's not a viable means of financial support.

I'm 24 and totally screwing up at the find mate/have offspring thing, but I've got to say, a lot of my mom's friends who got married and had kids and abandoned or never started their careers are in serious financial trouble because of divorce.

Wow, thanks Boston Globe. Thank you so much for setting my priorities straight! I was about to waste some of the most fertile years of my life getting an education, but now I know better. So let me go find a man (because we're all hetero here) and get myself knocked up a few times (because adoption later is clearly not an option), and then I can go back to college later when I've got a bunch of babies to take care of. Man, I was so lost without you, Globe.

Take it elsewhere please, I belong to a movement that tries to move human rights forward and believes that all people are created equal, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, gender, sexual identification, bmi, age, or disability.

Bwahahahaha!

What, seriously? You think that you've got skin made of some sort of anti-racism absorbing teflon? Look. We all absorb racism and sexism and myriad other isms just existing in the world we live in. It doesn't make you a bad person so long as you own it. And telling someone who is owning it that they can take their racism against white people elsewhere so you can continue to forge ahead in your lily white nirvana of enlightened unbiased liberalism is preposterous. So is disregarding the experiences of POC just because you don't like what they think about you. Guess what: Plenty of men just call women sexist for calling shit how they see it, and these men deign to dismiss all the experiences of women just because they don't like owning the sexism they inherited by being in the world.

White people are racist. That doesn't mean we're all hatemongers. I'd heartily recommend Inga Muscio's Autobiography of a Blue-eyed Devil. It might help.

The Boston Globe "baby" piece is comedy gold.

The good news is that psychology research shows you will gain more happiness anyway by finding a partner than by having a good job.

I sometimes imagine what my life would have been like if I had stayed with my ex instead of pursuing my career. Then I wonder where they would have buried me after the suicide.

"[Y]ou have your whole life to get a career."

Oh, really? Because there are so many middle-aged women trying to jump back into their careers two decades after leaving them to birth/raise children that are able to pick up right where they left off, right?

She seems to glump all white people into a mold of weird rules and outlooks.

All of those “weird rules and outlooks� are the expectations of a white, heteronormative dominant culture. She’s not attacking white people per se, she’s attacking a societal structure that privileges them while systematically oppressing and excluding Others.

If you don’t know anything about racism (or don’t care), please read the link below, or do some basic research before posting replies to topics dealing with racial issues. Thanks!

http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/required-reading/

It doesn't make you a bad person so long as you own it. And telling someone who is owning it that they can take their racism against white people elsewhere so you can continue to forge ahead in your lily white nirvana of enlightened unbiased liberalism is preposterous. So is disregarding the experiences of POC just because you don't like what they think about you.

Ah, but what we have in Nopper's piece, and in most pieces is like this is explicitly about people having dick fights over this.

"I am oppressed and a victim of [X] and yes, I have a wee wee wee bit of oppressor in me, but YOU are a white racist thug from the very beginning and the ways in which YOU oppress others is myriad and infinite. Hence my penis is bigger than your penis."

I don't believe in original sin and so I avoid original sin arguments. I think that everyone is privileged in some way or another, and I dislike dick fights which are almost always completely pointless and distracting from the real work.

What happens is that people who are owning their shit are suddenly told they have 4Byears of evolution they have to attone for as well, and this frequently comes from people that use this argument as a way to avoid taking any responsibility for the nonsense they need to own.

Hence Nopper who apparently was "assaulted" and says she wants to press charges until it becomes inconvenient for her. She fails to do her duty as a citizen to press charges and have it proven in court and instead goes over the top (yet again) on the people keeping her down.

Basically she is a racist attention seeker trying to draw attention away from her nonsense by calling everyone else privileged racists.

roymacIII,
Right. I know Africa is made up of other countries, thats why I mentioned Egyptian (which is part of Africa). I meant I prefer to see Americans who come from a variety of African backgrounds as African, just as for whites I prefer European.

"Dick fights?" "My penis is bigger than your penis?"

Bullshit. I call troll. Your use of scare quotes around the word assaulted (b/c if you really doubt that she was, you would say allegedly), coupled with calling her a racist attention seeker is a great stinking pile of horse puckey. I especially love your righteous indignation at her pressing charges until it becomes "inconvenient" for her. It's not her job to bear the burdens that come with pressing charges if she doesn't want to. What does that remind me of...oh! I know! Rape apologists who say that if a woman was really raped, she'd carry it all the way to court and fight like hell for a conviction no matter what happens to her along the way.

I gotta say, Flathead, classy.

It's interesting that this woman points out that people of color requesting equal rights are perceived as somehow being anti-white...

wow sera, I never said she hated whites. I think the ass that felt liberties to do what he did, did so because he felt he could because of her race, and her gender. I also feel that she was mistreated based on her race and on the sexist stupidity of the attendants. I just felt she put in a couple of generalizations that werent correct, and seemed to have a bit of belief that ALL whites are exclusively racist.I have seen many races be racist torwards each other, and it doesnt help the problem by seeing whites as all racists exclusively. My relatives werent treated with a silver platter because they are considered white today. Technically my relatives are always identified as something other than my race because of their dark skin, which isnt hard to fathom considering its a country about 40 miles from Africa in the mediteranean. My ancestors used to get harassed by the KKK, and deal with segregation as well. Laws were written in the south making it illegal to have kids with my race, and people of my race have been lynched as well. My grandmother has plenty of stories.

I guess I feel that whoever gets designated with 'whiteness,' by whoever considers themselves with the right to give whiteness doesnt necessarily mean that the race who is now identified as white sees themselves that way.

I'm trying not to be offensive, but the other day I was toying around by thinking of new angles concerning race and how we can perceive ourselves to diminish racism, genocides, ect. I have seen many people of all races be racist against one another, and feel that if we identify with our culture it will create an empathy and collective human self-investment. Perhaps if we respect our own cultures it will extend torwards others as well.I think the rules against racism should be static regardless of the race because thats how we erradicate it.

"White people are racist. That doesn't mean we're all hatemongers. I'd heartily recommend Inga Muscio's Autobiography of a Blue-eyed Devil. It might help."

kissmypineapple,
Fuck. I get it. I wasnt saying I should overlook how whiteness is privileged in society, and NO I fucking dont think that she hates whites. I think its a certain paranoia shes taken on that distorts her self-identity about herself. I think racism is different than sexism since all races have been racist and expressed that racism in a myriad of ways. One gender has always oppressed the other, in all cultures.

J Pierpont Flathead = Troll.

Evidenced by:

1) Examining the victim's background in order to find something, anything to use as a thin excuse to suggest that she is "lying" or trying to "draw attention to herself."

2) Calling the examination of racism and the construct of race "dick fights" and reducing them to an argument of "...my penis is bigger than your penis."

3) Scare-quoting the word assaulted.

"Hence Nopper who apparently was "assaulted" and says she wants to press charges until it becomes inconvenient for her"

"Basically she is a racist attention seeker trying to draw attention away from her nonsense by calling everyone else privileged racists."

Flathead,
Wow, I dont think shes doing that AT ALL. I think the incident actually happened and that uninvited grab on her arm and the verbal threat was indeed assault. I also think it had to do BOTH with her gender and her race. The ass that assaulted her was a misogynist who felt he could do certain behaviors torwards her probable due to docile passive stereotypes about Asians. I wonder if he wouldve done that to a Eastern European woman considering that stereotypes of Eastern Europeans women are along the same lines as Asian women?

judgesnineteen: your bit about culture was more than a bit harsh. It can be entirely constructive to speak of African culture. There is absolutely nothing wrong with EG's statement in that regard. When one speaks of culture, they’re not necessarily speaking of homogeny. For instance, I can have a perfectly reasonable and even academic discussion entirely about the subjects of Asian or North American or European Culture.

You don’t seriously think the culture of Italians and Jews is mesurably less homogenous than African’s, do you?

It's not her job to bear the burdens that come with pressing charges if she doesn't want to.

She's an adult. She's a citizen. She is the first person victim and witness. She lives a privileged life as a grad student and adjunct faculty member.

Letting her "alleged assailant" go just means he will do this again on someone less able to defend herself. He will do this again on a 12 year old girl, or worse.

Who other than her has a duty to stop this one person that she witnessed and that she uniquely can stop?

Don't tell me thinks like men should stop men from raping, or white people should stop white people from racisting, if you're going to let a privileged individual like her NOT press charges because it is inconvenient for her.

GopherII, I think something happened but I am not sure what. I think the best way to stop these sorts of things from happening is in a court of law where everyone has the right to due process. I think the wrong place to stop this from occurring is on the Internet denouncing everyone that you didn't agree with as racists.

Was she assaulted? Beats me. Some creep in an airplane sitting next to her took an offensive wide stance and insisted on it by pressing his leg next to hers. He then behaved like a complete asswipe and a misogynist.

I honestly don't know if that is assault or not. I am not a lawyer. It's different from "alleged assault" where someone says YEinDE hit me and everyone can agree that if YEinDE hit me, that hitting is definitely assault.

I don't know if what this asshole did is actually assault or not. It's definitely impolite. It's definitely asshole behavior. It's almost certainly misogynistic. Is it assault? I don't know.

oops, I was looking at the wrong end of the post for names. Anyway, I made my point.

"I guess I feel that whoever gets designated with 'whiteness,' by whoever considers themselves with the right to give whiteness"

...or to take whiteness away?

"I meant I prefer to see Americans who come from a variety of African backgrounds as African, just as for whites I prefer European."

GopherII, I prefer to see myself as a Texan and an American, thanks. The closest I can come to being "European" is four generations back and I think it would look a bit silly to refer to myself as Czech. How about you let people make their own identifications?

I have no problem agreeing to the idea that whites are inherently racist since it's the equivalent of men automatically benefiting from the patriarchy. Such is the world we live in. However, I do have a problem with the (pardon the pun) black and white nature of the argument. I may benefit from being white, but my socio-economic background, religion and sexuality pretty much eliminate most of that benefit. We live in a world of gray areas and a person may be favored in one column and dunned in the next.

Mina,
I dont know what your last post is about. I think that we should begin to see new angles about ourselves as humans and as races. Technically how can I identify as white if most of my relatives are dark? Yeah, I'M white colored, but it doesnt necessarily say anything about my race. If I identify as white its like I'm not seen as part of my own race and identified with my family. Individual racial identity is what matters and how we connect to it, not what someone else disignated about us.

BTW, I hope I'm not offending anyone but I'm trying to see race from an angle I hadnt considered before using races that have both dark and light-skinned people as a way of perhaps illuminating on the superficialities of identifing by skin color our racial identities. I think it would be freeing to leave those superficial elements about race to be more autonomously identified.

Whoa, I'll be 23 this month- I better drop out of nursing school now and get myself knocked up! Fortunately I have the perfect man but oh crap, I don't think I want kids! What to do???

From the first article:

"Exit polls have showed that fans of Hillary — who once said they would be happy with Obama if Hillary dropped out — were hardening in their opposition to him, while Obama voters were not so harsh about her."

Is that true? I support Clinton, but I would be perfectly okay with Obama. I have some beef with him, but it's certainly not enough to make me "harsh." I would vote for him if he gets the election, certainly. I know several Obama supporters, however, who would rather not vote in the general election than vote for Clinton.

"Mina,
I dont know what your last post is about. I think that we should begin to see new angles about ourselves as humans and as races. "

I was thinking of how race is socially constructed, and how who's ethnic groups are considered "white" can change from era to era and place to place.

FedHu,
I'm merely discussing how I view the races. I'm not telling you how to view yourself. Am I not a part of the human race? Am I not a race? Then I'm sure I can give my personal take on the matter because it helps illuminate my identity, my racial identity, and vice versa. It connects humans to one another, and allows room for more complexity. I have allowed room for others to critisize me, because I am not that schooled on the matter, but I'm sincerely making attempts to analyze my thoughts to discern what I'm attempting to communicate. I think the more people discuss race and how that affects us individually then the more we can accumulate diverse experiences from others to reveal insights about human nature and can use that information to expand on our own self-perspectives and integrate that into a our own personal racial identity.

One gender has always oppressed the other, in all cultures.

Actually, that’s not true. Research has shown that most of the (rare) matriarchal-labeled societies were essentially egalitarian.

shelbywoo,
Personally I think the ideal society was the Amazonians. Shit, THEY had it right.

Mina,
Whats unnerving is how its like some baton thats supposed to denote privilege. Thats why I dont like to identify as 'white' is simply because its too loaded. For example, is a white German who happens to be darker than one of their whiter German peers NOT considered white? Does it "X" out their self-identity? I think the way that white identity was formerly constructed was based on ignorant fear and those of the Eastern or Western European races that