Canoes Reek of Genocide, Theft and White Privilege, Professor Claims

Btw, The Perilous Whiteness of Pumpkins

I said it existed and here it is:

This article examines the symbolic whiteness associated with pumpkins in the contemporary United States. Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte, a widely circulated essay in McSweeney’s on “Decorative Gourd Season,” pumpkins in aspirational lifestyle magazines, and the reality television show Punkin Chunkin provide entry points into whiteness–pumpkin connections. Such analysis illuminates how class, gender, place, and especially race are employed in popular media and marketing of food and flavor; it suggests complicated interplay among food, leisure, labor, nostalgia, and race. Pumpkins in popular culture also reveal contemporary racial and class coding of rural versus urban places.

Yep, just like canoes are now bad, so are pumpkins.

Of course, pumpkins are N. American, so it's only a matter of time before someone decides that they have been culturally appropriated and tells everyone that no one can have anymore pumpkin spice anything or that it's a terrible thing to have pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving because it's symbolic of the genocide even more than most other foods or something.

a reply to: ketsuko

I wish 'em luck with that.

I'd look at 'em and laugh, not caring in the slightest if I offend their delicate sensibilities.

There's social awareness, then there's stupidity... I'll leave it y'all to decide which these are.

a reply to: SlapMonkey


Is she one of them "educated voters" we keep hearing about?

Her parents must be so proud.

Oh, she's Canadian?!

Sorry, I find it hard to tell sometimes.

Ya gotta wonder what it's like inside her head with all them squirrels juggling knives.

Just to help with the facts here.

The Australian Native peoples have built and used Canoes for 50,000+ years........Way, Way before Indians even Existed on North American soil.

In fact, its considered, that's how they got to the southern land in the first place .
Africans have also used canoes for aeons.

So this woman's claim of "White Privilege" makes no sense.

To show how nuts this is and because I can't resist. Even Obama seems to think this is silly garbage.




You just can't make this stuff up, but they could fire these nuts instead of letting them teach.

a reply to: Blaine91555

Well, to be fair, he can't display white privilege now can he?

Or is he only halfway displaying it? I can never tell with him.

a reply to: SlapMonkey

And I was born in 1979, so I didn't have a lot of time to complain in the 70s.

Justifying your ignorance of reality by pleading ignorance of history won't wash. That's precisely the problem here -- people who know no history bleating their foolish, bigotry-fuelled opinions against the judgment of a real historian.

Thirty-seven years old and still clueless about history. A sad confession indeed.

My people have pretty much turned in our canoes for the motorboat, it's a much quicker way to go about on the water. Now I know why I was always wary of those white guys with canoes. I went to St. Lawrence University for a time. Used to get together with some fellow Mohawk students and go canoeing on the Grasse river, never ran into any privileged white people in the canoes. Honestly, this is the silliest thing , I guess some people have a lot of idle time.

My people have pretty much turned in our canoes for the motorboat, it's a much quicker way to go about on the water. Now I know why I was always wary of those white guys with canoes. I went to St. Lawrence University for a time. Used to get together with some fellow Mohawk students and go canoeing on the Grasse river, never ran into any privileged white people in the canoes. Honestly, this is the silliest thing , I guess some people have a lot of idle time.

originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: redempsh

Did I miss the bit about the canoe?

Rudyard Kipling changed his nind about the imperial project after he lost a beloved son in the First World War. He died a bitter, regretful man.

Great writer, though. Put his point about as well as it could be put. Unfortunately the opposing point is put not by literature but by history. Come to my country some time and I'll show you who actually bore the White Man's Burden. Hint: it wasn't the white man.

Kipling my eyeball.

Actually, Kipling was anti-colonial by the time he wrote that. He is warning that the day is coming when the "half-civilized" peoples catch up and become "peers." And the white man would be judged, his whole civilization, by the way he treated "the little people" on the way up.

The joke is that the conquered people would be expected to be greatful for the chance to be cogs in the big western machine.

a reply to: Astyanax

(sorry for the late reply)

Ignorant of history?

How's that, exactly? Just because I said that I was basically born after the '70s, so I wasn't part of that complaining? Jesus--your bar for judging (and accusing) must be pretty low if that's how you define ignorance.

Call me nuts, but I think that you missed my point entirely and latched on to something that you wanted me to be saying instead of what I actually meant--it's a common problem on ATS these days, one to which you seem to be adding.

I'm not clueless about history--it's actually something that I was considering minoring in during college, and I had more than one history professor actively recruit me to be a history major because of my understanding and passion for learning about history. Your impotent conclusion about me based on your own misunderstanding of my comment really means absolutely nothing to me, but enjoy your ignorant judgments of others, because it really adds to intelligent discussion on this web site.

And how is my opinion so "foolish" and "bigotry-fuelled?" Seriously, I'm interested in the mental gymnastics that you're performing to come to this conclusion. I'll wait patiently, although without holding my breath, for your defense of your opinion of me--one to which your own claim about my opinion could be readily applied.

Aaaaaaand....go....