Oh, God no. I have this perception because at one time I felt like I wasn’t “getting ahead” and it was because I was “a young woman.” Looking at Oprah, not anything she has said, but just looking at her, I stopped feeling like “society” was “doing something” to me. Oprah’s existence forced me to reframe my “victimization.” Maybe I’m not lucky, or I’m not trying hard enough, or I don’t have the right talents, or I’ve run into a few jerks (and I certainly have) - but it isn’t something systemic that no one overcomes.
Margaret Thatcher being what occurs to me as the prime example of someone who “doesn’t count” as a woman. Obviously, she is, but when held up as a successful woman, she is often held up as a woman who achieved success because she “behaved like a man” - success came and we chose to overlook the breast thing.
I don’t think this is correct. It ignores the fact that people like Tiger and Obama are half “other”. To characterize them as just “black” makes as much sense as characterizing them solely by their otherness. It doesn’t seem to fit the fallacy you mention.
I have to admit that the first time I heard of Condaleeza Rice I didn’t think it was one of those weird black names. I just assumed she was hispanic.
Marc
I’ve heard Halle Berry and other mixed race people referred to as “Halfrican-American”, which seems very dismissive and insulting to me. I used to work with a black guy who had a similar attitude to what the OP describes. For instance, he was a big sports fan, but didn’t follow any sports “that don’t have any brothers in them.” Someone mentioned that there were a few black players in the NHL, and he said there was “something wrong with them.”
I definitely think it happens, that whites seize on “anti-black” statements by blacks. Many Conservative whites have the perception that blacks don’t take responsibility for themselves, period. Many Liberal whites are tired of feeling guilty for being white. So both groups love it when black leaders preach self-reliance and self-determination. Plus it’s what whites are raised on (never mind the unequal playing field, the social and economic disparities into which we’re born).
At the same time, whites (especially white men) feel enormous pressure to succeed and don’t have an “out” when they fail. They need to blame someone. When they know about affirmative action policies and efforts to level the playing field, they feel cheated - they’re not getting ahead (as much as they thought they would), why should someone else get a piece of the pie?
That’s the downside of self-reliance and self-determination, it never occurs to whites that they’re not succeeding as well as they’d imagined because it simply can’t be done. Not everyone’s going to be Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, but that’s what they hold as a standard. Nobody aims for Average anymore.
Tiger is well over half “other,” on the other hand, U.S. society has a very, very long tradition of enforcing the “one drop” rule. A lot of people who identify as black have no grandparents whose DNA all arrived from Africa.
Once a society starts down that path, both enforcing and accepting (as if they had a choice to “accept”) the “one drop” rule, it is a bit odd to come along later and say the one drop rule is not biologically accurate. Everyone knows that it is not biologically accurate. However, culturally it has become part of our societal recognition of person.
Senator Obama is “half” black, but he married a black woman, moved into a black community, joined a black church, and identifies himself as black. I will go along with the U.S. Census Bureau and let people set their own groups.
OTOH, Mr. Woods is a mixture of white and black, two separate Asian ethnic groups, and North American Indian. (He ain’t “half” nothin’.) Again following the U.S. Census Bureau’s lead, I will let him call himself whatever he wishes. However, given the long tradition of the “one drop” rule and the very real problem noted in the OP (that accomplishments by blacks somehow wind up being transferred away from blacks), I also have no problem with some black persons “claiming” Mr. Woods as one of “their own” (as long as they do not get in Mr. Woods’s face and insult him for not adhering to their desires).
No, according to Oprah, you aren’t wishing hard enough.
And what about the meme of black people calling other succesfull blacks “white” because to become succesfull, they had to betray their “blackness”, whatever that may be?
Even whites, in a fit of overly PC, may use that meme the same way.
PC White Person A: “Blacks do have opportunities in this society. Look at Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell.”
Even more PC White Person B: " No, that doesn’t prove anything. Those two aren’t really black. Real blacks don’t have the same chances these two had."
Using the meme this way may confuse the matter brought up by the OP even more.
I don’t dislike Oprah because she’s a successful black woman, I dislike her because of stupid shit like that.
But we don’t have a definition of “black.” What does it mean? How can we know who is other if we don’t know other than what?
It can be an attempt to define away an inconsistency. I don’t think any white people would call Barack Obama anything but black if he were in an inner city gang. But since he’s not, that’s when the definitions start to change.
Am I correct in understanding that the term “black” applies to individuals with traceable ancestry to African countries only?
In other words, if a Brazilian appears “black” do I count him as being “black” or just a dark skinned Brazilian?
I’ve heard dark skinned Indians (from India) referred to as black by other Indians. The definition of black and white will depend on where you are and who you’re talking to.
I had a light brown skinned (George Lopez colored) Brazilian friend who said she’s considered white in Brazil, although she wouldn’t be considered white here in the U.S.
Africans were brought to Brazil for slavery, though, so it wouldn’t be unlikely for the dark skinned Brazilian, and the medium skinned Brazilian, and the light skinned Brazilian to have black African genes.
I hate the “not black enough” meme, but I do think it has a point in some cases. You can’t use the accomplishments of the black child born in a middle class suburban home to married, college educated couple to prove that the child born in the inner city to an uneducated single mother should be able to succeed. Same thing with a poor white child raised in the rural mountain areas.
I found it troubling because in no other continent were the people parsed into color groups. Race was absent from the discussion of all the other continents, civilizations, and societies. Europe has Europeans. Asia has Asians. India has Indians.
But the “blacks” of sub-Saharan Africa were the only group described in this way. The race of the players only seems to matter when we come to Africa. Everyone else gets described by geographic origin or language. I mean, it would be like if I came up with a race category to separate the “olive” Mediterraneans from the “white” Scandinavians. Or the “brown” Asians from the “yellow” Asians.
That’s what pissed me off. I have no ill-will towards Diamond, because I’m sure he was just following conventions, but I wish he had come up with a better way to describe the ethnic groups of Africa. Especially since evolutionary biologists are always pounding the “race is a social construct” meme.
Perhaps part of it is that when someone is really accomplished, all of us want to feel close to them. That’s easier to do if they don’t belong exclusively to a different group. For those of for us whom black is a different “clan,” perhaps part of de-emphasizing their blackness has less to do with minimizing the “blackness” part of the accomplishments of remarkable people such as Mr Powell and Ms Winfrey, and more to do with wanting to feel closer to them.
I think this clannishness is part of our common genetic heritage, and the feelings it produces are fairly universal. Sometimes they produce a sense of possessiveness (My clan came up with the Declaration of Independence) and sometimes jealousy (Hey; he’s not just your guy).
We should probably try to get away from the idea that anyone chooses their parents…
I think you just did.
Uh, no I didn’t.
Perhaps because on no other continent did the various “races” actually come into direct contact while remaining distinct?
As part of his overall work exploring for a popular audience the idea that the distribution of technology and power was very much a product of historical acident and luck. As he wrapped up his work, he needed to deal with the continent of Africa–a place where five distinct human populations have encountered each other. You cannot talk about a group with using a name.
Europe has whites. Southwest Asia has whites–separated from East Asia by the Himalayas and the steppes. (And noone is in the habit of calling East Asians “yellows.”) The Americas have Indians. The Pacific ocean has Pacific islanders. Only in Africa do we have four fairly distinct groups: (North to South) whites, blacks, (surrounding) pygmies, and Khoisan. Then Madagascar was the recipient of Austronesian settlers. In a discussion of those peoples, (which included the references to the Mediterranean and Northern Sahara peoples as “white”), what word would you prefer he choose for the Non-white, non-pygmy, non-Khoisan, non-Austronesian Africans that would be understood by any large percentage of his audience? Heck, what would you call them, technical or common?
This is going to sound like a stupid question, but I have to ask it…
Is the difference between a Pygmie and a Masai greater than the difference between a Chinese and a Japanese?
That’s not a stupid question at all. I don’t have an answer, Nzinga, but I think you asked a pretty good question.
Marc