To stop taking another GD thread completely astray, I’ll move my part of the discussion over here.
In the PC thread, a few of us are talking about people being “colorblind”–not seeing or ignoring a person’s racial characteristics.
I’m not sure to what extent colorblindness is actually possible, but if it is, I’m not sure it’s a good thing. Is ignoring what someone looks like a positive thing? Doesn’t it mean that we are unable to understand aspects of their lives and personalities?
I’m not talking about it being good to judge people based on their skin tone. But I’m not in favor of self-imposed ignorance (in the purest sense of that word), either.
A person of another race is my equal, not my twin.
I don’t think it’s possible or even desirable. People have different cultures, subcultures, and generally different values. They are compatible in different proportions. It is good to be good to everyone. However, I do believe that not all culture is equal. Some cultures are better than others, in some ways. Sometimes one culture is better than another in one way while the other culture is better than it in another way. It is through the interaction that we can take the best of cultures and synthesize them into a better overall human culture.
What, exactly, are you claiming are racial characteristics? Honestly here, how are you defining your terms? Does being ‘colorblind’ mean that you notice someone’s skin is black, but don’t make any other assmptions as to other characteristics you might ascribe to them due to their race?
Sure it’s a good thing. Judging people on individual merit and not paying attention to such extraneous details as their skin color can only be a good thing. Otherwise, once you start down that road it’s dangerous. As long as you allow ‘good’ judgments about someone based on their race, you can allow ‘bad’ ones too. You’re Asian? You’re good at math. You’re Jewish? You’re good at dealing with money. Black? Basketball. Gay? Trendy fashion sense. Jewish? Greedy. Asian? Bad driver. Black? Associated with crime/drugs. Gay? Mindlessly promiscous.
How do we decide what ‘racial characteristic’ based on a certain demographic reality is invalid and another based on a certain demographic reality is valid? Every type of racism, bigotry prejuice and willful ignorance is based on errors of language and thought that come from fallaciiously treating individuals as if they were fungible. From anti-Muslim bigotry that says “Muslims are terrorists” to anti Jewish racism that says “Jews are clannish and never truly loyal to their home nations” to anti-American bigotry that says “Americans are stupid and warlike.”
Stupid bigotry like that isn’t confined to the ‘right’ any more than it’s confined to the ‘left’. Falling into any of those traps of lazy thinking is something that can happen to anybody who doesn’t have the intellectual fortiture to deal with an analog world without pretending that it’s a digital world. People who habitutally skip the qualifier of “some-but-not-all” before talking about a group are people who are more comfortable with their bigotries than with the vagueries of reality.
Sloppy thinking and sloppy language leads to a sloppy worldview. And sloppy worldviews have led to everything from Jim Crow, to White Flight, to pogroms, to the Holocaust and on and on and on.
In many circumstances, maybe even most, sure. You don’t need to notice how someone looks to see if they’ll be a good engineer, or a good doctor, or a good fighter pilot or what have you.
Seems like a huge assumption, yes?
Do you really “understand” something about, say, a black man’s life and personality if you only assume those things based on him being black? What if he’s the son of a multi-millionaire family living in an upscale Connecticut neighberhood? What if he’s a British national and American politics/society have never left a mark on him? Can we make any valid assumptions? If you meet someone with a Jewish last name, does that really tell you aything about whether or not they came from an observant household, or one that cooked traditional food, or one that had had anything to do with traditional “Jewish culture” for the last 200 years?
Do we really know anything about specific about someone’s life and personality based on their race? Honest question with no real accusation here, but how is assuming things about a person based on their skin color/ethnicity/what have you not an act of racism/bigotry?
How is it self imposed ignorance to assume that until you get to know someone on an individiual basis, you don’t know them as an individual? Even statistical probabilities go only so far. A high percentage of blacks are likely to be Christians and specifically baptists. Does that make it a safe assumption to assume that a black person you meet is a Baptist/Christian? Recent studies have shown that black men are more likely to have served time than gone to college or served in the military, should you then assume that a black man you meet is probably an ex-con?
I’m not being flippant here. What things do you classify as ‘racial characteristics’? Which are you willing to ascribe to people and which aren’t you willing to? Isn’t the entire concept of ‘racial characteristcis’ something of a canard itself?
Well, depends on what you mean by your equal. A person of any other race is an individual, and although they deserve equal rights, they have as much chance of being your equal in any particular as anybody else does, from your race or another one.
As for being your twin, I think that’s part of the point. Someone in your race is as likely to be your ‘twin’ as any two people of another race are to be ‘twins’. Even actual biological twins are individuals, too.
Well, living as I do in a throughly mixed society – mixed 73%, white 16%, black 11% – I must admit I don’t go around noticing other people’s ‘color’ nor do I think much about it as a descriptor of anything a person might be.
Sure, if I take an interest in a particular person I’d be able to describe them in further detail – including color and their own self-identification. But as I wrote in the other thread it’s nigh near impossible (at least it seems that way to me) to descibe the exact color/race many/most people here are.
Thus it sort of becomes a non-factor. And I see nothing wrong with that.
This is an interesting point, because I’m pretty sure the OP is talking about the US, but the example she used in the other thread was an instance where she was basically working in a majority-Black environment. For most Whites in the US, that would be a very unusual situation. I don’t see how our society can be colorblind when Whites are still such a clear majority.
Having said that, I think it would be great if we were a colorblind society. But then, folks like **mostro **or hippy hollow wouldn’t have to think of their race as an important part of who they are, and they probably wouldn’t.
Well, if there was no stigma attached to various colors, I see no reason why it couldn’t work, regardless of the demographics. Education is key, and the point at which an abhorence of the fallacies of composition and division are part and parcel of a critical mass of Americans, I think we’ll see real change.
I think one of the most fascinating aspects of identity politics is the degree to which an external set of circumstances can inform the debate. Many Jews in Hitler’s Germany would simply have identified themselves as Germans only. Certainly someone who had one grandparent who happened to be a Jew wouldn’t think of themself as something seperate from “Germanic culture”.
But put enough force/prejudice/impact behind it, and it makes damn good sense to watch your ass.
The fact that I’m Jewish by heritage doesn’t register on my consciousness in normal day to day life. It is brought into stark relief when, say, bigots accuse me of traitorous dual loyalty or I stumble accross various hate sites on the 'net. Barring external pressure, I personally doubt that many Jewish communities the world over would have anywhere near their cohesion; watching your ass, and feeling as if you have to hang together instead of hanging apart, becomes incrementally more important when it’s more likely that someone might be gunning for you.
John, perhaps a bit of background can help you understand how I got to where I am now.
As you well know, I was born and raised in Franco’s Spain, and quite frankly, I had little knowledge of blacks or for that matter other races. Spain, during the sixties was a fairly closeted society and the tourist boom we experienced during that decade consisted of mainly/solely of other whites – Brits, Dutch, Germans, etc. – which only showed me that there were, on the whole, people of fairer skin and lighter eyes than we had in most parts of Spain – my family’s region of origin, Asturias, is composed of mostly direct descendants of Nordic tribes. No shortage of fair-skinned light-eyed people there. So in that vein on one of the first trips to the Dominican Republic – that I can recall anyway, as my dad traveled back and forth a lot due to his business being based here – I remember being at a hotel pool and sort of being amazed by the fact that this black gentleman went in the water, came out and his hair ‘didn’t get wet.’ I was about eight at the time and with that childhood candor I went straight to my dad and asked him how such a thing was possibly. His response: got beet-red and laughed his ass off…and then game me an explanation.
Point being, that if I can come from such a state of complete ignorance to where I am today (mind you, there was obvious racism amongst many older members of my family, including my mom and dad) so can you and everyone else in the US. I think it’s as simple (and difficult, if you’ll pardon the dichotomy) as stopping, on an individual level, the pointless stereotyping. Yes, a lot of that works in conjunction with education and breaking away from the past. But of you look at the demographics in America it isn’t hard to predict, that if they hold in similar pattern (and I don’t see why they wouldn’t) fifty/seventy years from now, whites will no longer be such an “overwhelming” majority there. Quite the contrary, Latinos, blacks and mixed types, together, will be.
So no time like right now to start rethinking about this whole race classification nonsense. Sure, hopefully cultural diversity will remain for I think that’s a good thing, but the emphasis on ‘color,’ as I said from my own experiences, will become moot at some point. Again, how does one know for a fact what ‘race’ a person really is if said person has all kinds of mixed blood in his system? Point of fact, you alluded to Tiger Woods in the other thread and beyond your own comment of seeing him as “just another golfer…” fact is, he is NOT ‘just a black guy’ as many would say by reading or listening to many of the comments about him. Or doesn’t the fact that his mother is Asian account for anything? There is a good example of someone I wouldn’t know how to classify if I didn’t have said information. But to call him black without any other qualifier, methinks is simply wrong. Unless of course tha’s what HE says. And as you well know, he DOESN’T – even if people, for the most part, refuse to listen on the basis of some archaic laws of yours. You know, the whatever percentage of blood makes a black person in the US. Utter BS methinks.
You’re right in that it’s not just a problem with white people. Other colors (and that is what it ultimately comes down to, colors, not races per-se) have to join in as well and stop this whole fixation on amounts of melanin in the system.
BTW, I always rolled my eyes (inwardly I should hope. At least most of the time before I went into the whole subconsciously-recorded, geographical spiel) while living in the States when almost invariably, people would comment upon finding out my given name “why you don’t look Spanish at all. Do you like tacos?”…or some variance thereof.
Harmless really as I never ever experienced any discrimination in my many years there. For at six three and rather naturally pale, no accent to speak of and favoring 501’s since youth, I was just another face and voice in that majority you speak of. Heck, even here a lot of natives that don’t know me at first approach me in what little English they can muster.
However, it also shows that ignorance-fighting has a looong way to go still.
Trite but true. Race? Now more than ever for the reasons stated above (and it holds true for Europe as well), The Human Race. Period.
Just hope we don’t kill each other off before we acknowledge that simple fact. Not trying to be controversial here but in that respect religions as whole are not helping. Rather the opposite really as I think they are effectively more divisive than race (again, whatever that is) itself.
When people profess to be colorblind, I usually give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that what they really mean is that while they notice race, they don’t let it color their perception of a person. It carries as much weight in their judgement as eye and hair color or their height. And I think this is a good thing. Ideally, skin color, eye shape, and hair texture should be on par with other non-socially-loaded phenotypic traits, even if they are markers for race.
Sometimes though, I sense that being colorblind to some people means ignoring race. Not just being blind to it, but going out of your way not to see it…or pretend not to see it. When describing someone of another race, these people will use every other adjective in the dictionary rather than commit the offense of calling them “black” or “Asian” or whatever. They pat themselves on the back for not being able to tell when they’re speaking to a white person on the phone versus a black person. Everyone has to be same, in their mind. And the way in which everyone has to be the same seems to always be “like white”. If people aren’t “like white” then its time to be uncomfortable.
I used to live above an elderly white woman who I got to know fairly well before she got sick and had to be institutionalized. One afternoon we were talking and she complimented me by saying she didn’t think of me as a black girl. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were Sicilian,” she said. So basically what I walked away with is that in order for her to like me, she had to see me as a white person. She couldn’t reconcile liking me with seeing me as black, so she had to mentally reclassify me as Sicilian. In a way, I think this kind of thinking is what the OP is alluding to. And I don’t think its good.
I wasn’t really disagreeing with you in that earlier post, but pointing out that your experience (where you live now) is quite different from the experience of most White Americans. That’s all. Yeah, we should be able to get past race, and I wish we could. Perhaps if more White people were surrounded by people of different races as much as you are, things might change a bit faster. I’m not offering an excuse, just an explanation.
As for Tiger Woods, you probably didn’t notice the many other threads in which I went out of my way to explain how multi-racial and multi-ethnic he is. If we were going by highest % ancestry, he’d be Asian, not Black. But I was referring to the reality of the US where someone who looks like him is generally seen as, and generally referred to as, a Black man or an African-American. It’s not my own sense of who he is, but how he is seen, and probably will be seen for most of his life.
I think I understand your ultimate point and I agree with it – the homogenization of culture. However I beg to differ on the descriptive part of it as least when applied to me and likely many many others (and I know you weren’t responding to my post directly either. But I think further clarification is needed). Meaning that, again, lots of times it is extremely difficult, based on shade of skin alone to determine what exact race any single individual might belong to. For instance if I were to lined-up a random group of mixed-heritage (and yes, I understand the conversation is US-centered. But it is still applicable to the point I am making for you have quite a bit of race-mixing and it is only bound to increase) how the hell would you, I, or any other lay person for that matter, know what “race” to ascribe to them? I mean beyond describing the perceived amount of melanin – or lack thereof – in such a person, what else are you really telling us about that person’s race?
Again and again I’ve been saying this but I don’t seem to be getting through. It simply appears to me that for many Americans the world (theirs anyway) is very clear cut. Just isn’t so! Never mind the scientific side to it all. Would that Collounsbury (sp?) was still here to address that side of it, although IIRC, Tamerlane, Tomand John? have a good grasp of the matter as well. Perhaps they (or others) could chime-in as well.
I did a bit of research last night and I found this, which I think helped me understand the misunderstanding that appears so prevalent on race issues in the US --or more precisely, why I encounter such difficulty in communicating my own understanding of same:
I don’t know you in meatspace nor have I ever been privileged to see a picture of you either. I do know from what you’ve written on the SD that you self-describe as a black woman. But you know what? That can conjure-up a thousand different images of your color for the melanin-spectrum is quite wide. So unless you’re really really dark-skinned for all I know this old lady might as well be right when she said you “looked Sicilian to her.” For as I am sure you know Sicily, like much of the Andalusian region of Spain, was inhabited by Moors of dark skin color (I guess many would qualify as black 2day or even then) for many a century, thus there are many Sicilian and Southern Spaniards of (some very) dark complexion.
So, based upon that thinking, should we start calling Sicilians and Andalucian Spaniards, “black” too? Pretty good dancers on the whole to boot, think Flamenco…if one wants to keep stereotyping of course. Not so clear-cut now is it?
Finally, I am not arguing with you but rather trying to understand this all-prevailing fixation on skin shades. Are you your color? And if so what does that even mean?
John, I don’t think I am disagreeing with you either as much as I am trying to understand (see above) the American POV/obsession with race classifications/boundaries based solely/mostly on color alone. I just think it is really f-up that’s all.
Cultural and religious differences I think are much more descriptive/accurate. Outside of a police line-up that is. Even if the perp happens to be a mutt of undefined ethnicity, he/she is still unique in her looks. Unless of course he/she has an evil twin.
Oh and BTW, no I didn’t read your threads about TG. Throw me a link and I will as time allows for it might help me further understand this whole perspective/cultural issue.
John, that last line should read: “Throw me a link and as times allows I’ll try to read it for it might help me further understand the whole American perspective on this mostly, to me, cultural issue”
I understand that this may be the case in your environment (and plenty of others). But in most places in the US, the population is not that difficult to sort into racial boxes. Things tend to be more black and white here (both figuratively and literally); the grays that are present in other places (like South America) are absent here because of the way the race construct has been historically applied.
So understand that when I talk about race, I’m talking from a US perspective. Being “colorblind” here is not going to be the same condition as it is elsewhere. Not being able to distinguish between the various browns on the human skin color spectrum has little to do with determining someone’s race here. It may where you come from, though.
In the US, as long as these mixed people either have or looked like they had sub-saharan African roots, they’d generally be considered black. I mean, their mixed-up-ness can be acknowledged as an aside or whatever, but if their features combined speak to a visible African ancestry, then that part of them tends to mark them as black moreso than anything else. Which gets to John Mace’s point about Tiger Woods. If none of us knew about his Asian and white heritage, and just went off his appearance, I bet most people would call him black. Some might point out that he looks mixed. But none would be calling him Asian. And none would be calling him white.
I know it’s hard for folks outside the craziness to understand, because it doesn’t make rational sense. But it’s true. I think as interracial couplings have become more prevalent–and white folks don’t want to call their own children black because they feel they’ll be left out of the child’s identity–we’ve seen more emphasis on recognizing “bi-racial” as a legitimate racial category. But practically speaking, it hard to do that in a society that has practiced the one-drop rule for so long.
Yes, hypodescent applies in the US. Perhaps it is only something that can only be understood by being born and raised in such a culture. Shoot, sometimes I’m confused by it, and I’m not a foreigner.
And you’re quite right. “Black woman” tells you very little about what I actually look like. There’s nothing literally black about me.
Oh I know there’s folks in Sicily that look like me. That’s not what she was saying, though. She didn’t say that I looked Sicilian. That wasn’t what our conversation was about. It was how she viewed me. I was nice and helpful. Said hi to her and let her regale me with stories about her grandkids. Helped her with the appliances in her apartment. Also was in a relationship with a white guy, which she was surprised about initially. That I was black was never something I had had to point out to her, because she knew. So in the context of our conversation, it was clear that she was talking about things deeper than appearance. Maybe you had to be there to get it?
I’m black, not Sicilian, or anything else. That means that just what it means. It’s not a bad thing that needs to be treated like an elephant in the room that has to be ignored or called something else (I’m not a white woman with a tan). When someone treats it like a bad thing, then yeah its annoying.
Kind of like when a man compliments a woman by saying “you think like a guy”.
I agree with you if he says X and people tell him that he’s Y instead, that’s wrong to do. And rude.
But when you think about race, what’s really right? What’s really wrong?
Is it wrong that I’m considered black even though I could probably pass as Sicilian with a tight perm? What basis would I have to call myself anything except black? Both my parents are black. All four of my grandparents were/are black. I know of one white relative (a slave master), but he’s so far up the family tree that he might as well be Noah for all I care. Same goes for my Native American ancestry.
But I look like a Sicilian with a tight perm.
Is it wrong to call me black, do you think? 'Tis is a tricky question.
He doesn’t see color. Other people tell him he’s white, and he takes their word for it, but he doesn’t see color.
Your question implies that the norm for a black man is not to live in a rich CT neighborhood, so you’ve already made an assumption. But yes, a black man is in a rich CT neighborhood is, in today’s society, different from a white man there. I could probably assume that he’s been harassed or treated differently than the white man who lives there, and it affects his life.
I think colorblindness in the sense of not making assumptions is fine, but not colorblindness in ignoring varieties of culture or ethnicity that make the world a more interesting and complicated place.
It assumes nothing of the sort. It simply points out that people can come from a variety of backgrounds and cultures and countries, and knowing only their skin color tells you pretty much jack.
And since you bring it up, I would also point out that the norm is that most black people do not live in CT. That’s just a fact.
Why would you assume any such thing, rather than asking him/talking to him to find out his individual experiences?
Who has advocated doing that?
There is also a difference between recognizing that cultures (vague, amorphous and shifting beasts that they are) exist, and committing the fallacy of division. Just because baseball and apple pie are part of American culture, doesn’t mean that any randomly selected American will know a damn thing about his home town team or like apple pie. Assuming that because there is a loose grouping of history and traits associated with any particular population doesn’t mean that individual exemplars of that population will fit any mold.
Black culture contains such divergent historical markers as a fierce, fierce drive towards education in the postbellum period, a peer culture that sometimes deems academic success “acting white” in modern society, the degrading reality of ‘minstrel shows’, the social commentary inherent in some forms of hip hop and rap, the use of AAVE, the avoidance of AAVE, a close relationship with Baptist Christianity, a relationship with various forms of Islam, etc…
Jewish culture contains such divergent historical markers as the necessity of sheltering in a shetyl from marauding Cossacks, of trying to get into Ivy League universities despite racial quotas, of trying to fit in with mainstream society, or trying to marry only other Jews, of eating traditional foods, of not eating traditional foods, etc…
Culture is an abstraction, it’s a generalization. Draping it over individual bits of reality obscures, it does not elucidate.
The only way to get to know an individual is to get to know them as an individual.
P.S: Are we going to see a return by the OP, or has this thread been abandoned?
I think “colorblindness” as commonly expressed (“I don’t see skin color! I treat everyone the same!”) comes from a good place. A person who says they are colorbind is essentially saying they don’t think about race when they deal with people. Just the “inside stuff”.
I think it would be good if we all could be like this, so in that way I think colorblindness is a good thing. But I think it’s human nature to see groups and peg individuals into those groups. Forming prejudices, IMHO, are also part and parcel of who humans are. Everyone has them. So when someone says they are “colorblind” I always want to ask them what kind of drug they’re smoking. Because even if they don’t “see” race, they see gender, socioeconomic class, physical appearance, nationality, and a whole suite of other things. I don’t know a person who would claim that they don’t see these things, but if we’re going to throw race out of the window, why not everything that divides us?
I also agree with the OP in that there’s an unfairness involved when it comes to colorblindness. For most white people (or anyone who is the majority), race really isn’t that important to begin with. So it’s easy to say, “Let’s stop talking about it!” when it’s not important to you. Which then leads to finger-pointing when the minorities keep grumbling about it. If they mention race, they are accused of playing the dreaded race card or being hypersensitive. The implication is that if they would just stop thinking about it so much, their problems will go away. But racism still exists, as does discrimination and racial disparities. Pretending that we can wave a magical wand and disappear these things just by wishing race away…that’s ludicrous. The labels are not the problem. So I think it’s a bit naive to demand people be colorblind.
I’m not burdeoned by my race. It doesn’t weigh heavy on my brain every hour of every day. But just like anything else associated with my identity (my gender, my looks, my educational background, my culture), it’s a factor that can influence interactions with people, and it would be silly for me to pretend that it doesn’t.
