Londo: I don't know how they see out of them anyway. Tiny, beady, squinty little things aren't they?
Drazi Ambassador: Ambassador...
Londo: No the Maker has not been kind to you. Must be terrible trying to fly at night without running into entire planets.
DA: Are you saying the Centauri do not know what ships are patrolling their borders.
Londo: No, of course we know. The Maker has gifted us with great big eyes, and great big scanners, and great big, ah ... well that is no concern of yours.
Babylon 5, "Rumors, Bargains and Lies"
White people must have terrible eyesight. That's because they can't seem to tell apart people of any other race. Not Chinese:
The Chinese seem to be incapable of understanding our religion; but still less are they capable of understanding our political institutions. To confer the franchise upon them would be to put the balance of power on the Pacific into the hands of a people who have no conception of the trust involved, and who would have no wish to use it rightly if they had--would be to give so many additional votes to the employers of Chinese, or put them up for sale by the Chinese head centers in San Francisco. At least one Chinaman has already been naturalized, and though none of them have any intention of remaining here permanently, if it would pay them to acquire votes and they could be protected in voting, there are none of them who would object to being naturalized every hour in the day. The swearing required is nothing to them, and as for identification, all Chinamen look alike to the unpracticed eye.
Not Puerto Ricans:
For voting, the law requires one year in the state, four months in the county, one month in the district. But it is impossible to check, even if the holdover handout officials would want to. The Puerto Ricans all look alike, their names all sound alike and if an inspector calls in one of the swarming flats in the teeming tenements, nobody speaks English.
And not blacks:
The features reflect the inner nature, and they are more or less distinctly developed as we ascend or descend in the scale of being. The features of the white reflect all the higher and nobler as well as baser qualities of the mind. The negro has more or less of a dead conformity. On visiting a plantation of them at the South, it is difficult to tell one from another. The flat nose, enormous lips, and protuberent jaws, together with his flat, indistinct and shapeless features, strikingly approximate to the lower animals, and they are as utterly incapable of reflecting certain emotions as so much flesh and blood in any other part of the body. If the Creator, therefore, gave the negro the higher capacities that the Abolitionists claim, it is very evident that He denied him all opportunity to reflect them in his countenance.
It's a wonder that whites managed to do much of anything when they apparently can't see a damn thing.
1 comment:
There's a fair bit of evidence that people of all racial groups have more trouble recognizing people of other racial groups especially if they didn't grow up around them. (And as a personal anecdote, one Chinese individual told me that "all you white people look alike") The only substantial difference is that we seem to have a plethora of white authors who tried to tie the phenomenon as they knew it into their pre-existing racism.
Post a Comment