Talking about race

I was reading Mira's post on her page about the impact of a previous post which subject was race. It's extremely boring to me taking about race, prejudice and racism because I'm king of bombed with the subject all the time. Still, living where I live it's REALLY necessary because a big part of our people is black or "mixed".

Let me make some things clear here before I start:

I'm not racist. I CAN'T be racist. It's like a latin american wating to be Nazi. I'm "mixed", "half-breeded" or whatever is the correct word. My grandfather is black. I have black relatives. I have black friends. I have black idols. (Yeah, I know that rock'n'roll started with black people!)

Still... I'm sure this post will have an impact. 

Let me start:

I was thinking about writing something about it but as I said, the subject bores me. Then today after lunch, I was walking around the university and in a hall in the Geography school there was a wall recently painted with graffitti art. Stopped to see it and I read on the wall: "Power to the black people". I thought to myself, what the hell that means?

The first thing that came to my mind was: "Nazism backwards". In other times, black people was slaved, they suffered because white people thought that they were better, that they were a superior race. Now, world has agreed that we are all humans, all the same before the law and God and whatsoever. Mankind has been working to convince people that we're equals, no matter the "race", black, white, asian, jew... Now "Power to the black people" means to me that they don't want to be equal. They want to do just the same, that if they could they would slave white people to revenge they ancestors. What the hell?Is that kind of power they want? They already have! The most powerful man in the world IS black!

I'm not racist, I say again. I just can't stand the talking about how much injustice black people suffered all around. Slavery ended 121 years ago, in Brazil. They suffered a lot after that, I know. Of course they still suffer a lot due to prejudice but it's time for them to change their attitude about themselves and stop playing the "victim" role. Take the power, slowly but try it like any other person would do. We have black politicians, we have black rich people. I just don't think that "black power" is the way. It just shows that they want to prove the supremacy of the "black race" and not achieve equality.

Why not "Power to PEOPLE"? Why the thing has to be "Power to the black people"?

I hope I won't be misunderstood. But that's almost impossible since when the subject causes too much polemic people understand what you said they way they want to.

Have a nice day!

So much to say...

My day didn't start in a good way yesterday. A moth got in my bedroom last morning while I was changing clothers to go to work. I HATE those things, it was huge and it was coming straight ahead to MY head! I freaked out. I went out of my room running and stumbled, twisting my foot. It hurted a lot, I didn't woked that day.

I sent my student's tests results by e-mail to my boss. Three students of Elementary were with bad marks, he called me and said: "It doesn't exist a student of Elementary School with grades like this in English!" I told him that just a few students (3) were in this situation but what I really wanted to do was scream and say "You motherfucker, they are with this same grades since the first test they did and you came to say to me that 'this grades don't exist in Elementary now?  We have only two more months!" I couldn't sleep, because I had to reply an e-mail from him, and I tried really hard not to be sarcastic, but the unspoken words were sreaming inside my head.

At least I had my first driving lesson (well... not exactly the first but count as if it was). I wasn't as bad as I thought that I would be but I still suck (and I'll probably still suck for a looooong time). I hope that by my birthday I'll be with the driving license. =D

At least today was an interesting day. I went with some friends to the University Archives, they were taking their students from the trainee program there to see how a historian work, interpreting data from the files. They saw some files from the Brazilian Military Dictatorship and last week a university teacher and a torture survivor talked to them (unfortunately I couldn't watch this). It was really nice and I believed they enjoyed the ride around the campus and the Archives itself.

What people think about Ancient Greece...

I'm studying Ancient History again at the university, it isn't a compulsory subject and it talks about specifically about sex, power and religion in Greece and Rome. As it isn't a compulsory subject, people from other courses can enroll. So there are some design, Portuguese, journalism, law and biology students (the thing would be funnier if there were some people from Medical school)

Anyway... the funny (or disgusting) part is that people think that Greece is the gay paradise of the ancient world. I don't really know how that happens, maybe it's fault of high school teachers but it's the image people have from ancient Greece is that everyone could have sex anywhere and that every man was homossexual. But that didn't really happened.

They had moral codes, different from ours, but they had. You couldn't be caught havig sex in the street, you would be punished by losing your citizenship and that's the biggest shame for a ancient greek. Paederasty had an educational value, the younger is learning to be a citizen by learning to control himself, there wasn't any sexual act, the poor boy couldn't have an erection because if he can't control himself there he wouldn't be able to control himself at the assembly.

The thing could be even funnier when the thing is talking about Lesbos Island and Safo. You know... brazilian lexicon contributes with this prejudice since the word "safado" that means in English "shameless" or "pervert" comes from Safo.

I don't really believe in "Historia Magistra Vitae", History's utility isn't really learn from the past. But I do believe that many values had changed for worse. Modern society have forgotten about temperance and constancy, we've forgotten about becoming better people, of growing our minds better than our bodies.

I'll quote Plato and I apologize myself because I haven't found this quote in English so I had to translate from Portuguese.

"And it is bad that popular lover that loves the body more than the soul; because he isn't constant by loving an object that isn't constant as well."
Plato - The feast or On love.