But to ask the question assumes the possibility. And assuming the possibility is based on race. I don’t think it’s saying anything good or bad about the potential harassee, it’s just saying something about how things work.
There are people who claim not to see all of these things, but I think it turns each thing into something that feels like we should be ashamed of instead of an irrelevant difference.
Maybe the way I’m thinking about it is this: There’s a difference between accepting someone for who they are and ignoring what you view as their “faults.”
Well, it depends on how you define “colorblind.” In the sense that King used it, meaning that legal and societal barriers were eliminated from consideration for employment, educational opportunities, and so forth? Or in the sense that the right uses it, which means to ignore racial discrimination and pretend it doesn’t exist anymore?
I think some folks envision me as some radical “out there” guy on racial issues, but the reality is I didn’t always have a strong racial identity - living in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s, I think my national identity was far more salient. I mean, I always knew I was Black, but when I turned on TV and saw poor people, or uneducated people, or people up to no good, chances were that there were plenty of White people in that number. (Not that the UK is some utopia of race relations - it ain’t).
Coming to America and going to a school that was predominantly minority - and seeing how different it was, in terms of rigor, facilities, and course offerings, from the predominantly White schools in the same city - sure opened my eyes. And the rift between Black and White - outside of athletics, it seemed to me in the mid 1980s, none of the White kids I knew wanted to be “like” a Black person, and vice versa. (I’m overly simplifying this, and I’m making it way too Black-White - living in Central Texas, Latinos and Asians featured way more heavily in my life than Blacks and Whites.)
College was really fascinating, because then I encountered kids from the suburbs of Dallas and Houston, and rural parts of Texas who by either design or accident had never encountered non-White people who were as smart, hardworking, honest (insert any positive attribute here) as they and their families and friends were. I don’t harbor anger to those kids today - I feel sorry for them, but it was a real pain in the ass to be viewed as being somehow abhorrent or deviant because I worked hard in school and was honest. And of course not everyone viewed me that way, but I dealt with way too much of that shit in college for me to ignore the fact that there are some serious rifts between people of different racial and ethnic groups in this country.
If we all went to integrated schools, worked in integrated workplaces, and lived in integrated neighborhoods, and we saw that heroes, thugs, idiots, jackasses, nice guys, little old ladies, nerds, and every other subsection of the human race could be found in every racial and ethnic group, then I imagine “colorblindness,” insofar as it means “yes, I see there is a phenotypical difference in our pigmentation and families of origin, but it means little beyond that” is a noble goal… but it would require an incredible effort to combat the ugly legacy of Jim Crow, slavery, anti-immigrant bias, and so forth that is part of our nation’s history.
In other words, we’d have to become a lot more color-conscious for some time before we could even reasonably fathom becoming “colorblind.” My problem with most people who discuss this possibility is that they’re not willing to do the work to make that possible. (I’m not implicating jsgoddess orZoe, btw. It’s more of the people I’ve met over the years who advocate preserving a system of privilege for affluent Whites and doing absolutely nothing to attack or eradicate systems of inequity for anyone outside of that demographic. Or those who suggest that conforming and emulating the behaviors of affluent Whites is the “correct” way to behave.)
FTR, I am not an “angry” Black person. I love being Black and having that aspect of identity. I wouldn’t want to be something else!
The other thing about the US is we tend to get stuck on race being a white/black thing. Where I live, though, there aren’t many Blacks, but there are lots and lots of Asians (both South Asians and East Asians) and really lots of Hispanics (mostly Mexicans mestizos, but also some Central/South Americans). I have friends who are half European and Half East Asian and most people just see them as European. Others friends with the same mixture look unmistakably East Asian. But it’s not uncommon for someone to have only one Black grandparent and still be classified as Black. I have a friend who is 1/4 African-American/ 3/4 European, and she pretty much blends in with the White crowd-- but everyone knows she’s part Black. For some reason that’s just a big deal in the US.
My girlfriend is half Japanese and half European, and she can kind of blend in with whatever crowd she’s with. Some people assume she’s Hispanic when they first meet her. Others assume she’s White. As mixed race people become more common, though, more and more people can tell right away that she’s mixed.
I think our long history of segregating the races and pretending that racial mixing wasn’t happening just makes us (Americans) fall into this trap of putting people in one and only one racial box. It’s only recently that the census bureau allowed people to “check more than one box”.
Thanks, I think? I’m a little confused about what you think my position is.
I’m basically saying I don’t lump you in with that lot who blindly thinks colorblindness is an act of will, and it’s simply an attitude absent of political, socioeconomic, or cultural factors.
That was true in my case. My father was very pro-civil rights in a small town in the South during the fifties and sixties. (I was born in 1943.)
I was discriminated against in the other thread. The accusation was that because I focused on the individual personalities of my students rather than their race, I deserved to wear the white hood. Where I come from, that is a personal insult.
If you put me in a situation where 90% of the people have the same gender or are all poor or all wealthy or all plain or all Hispanic – after I have gotten used to it, then I would stop thinking about the issue. At least that’s been true with gender and socioeconomic status and nationality. I’ve had classes of all guys, all lower income and all Americans.
Cite?
No one can make you feel what you do not feel. You are the only one in control of your emotions. For clarity’s sake, what is the “it” that you are referring to?
Morning Black-American Woman, you with the face.
Did I say that correctly? Hope so, that was some typeful. 
First off I appreciate your reply though as you yourself point-out the whole US system as concerns racial designation (it would appear both at the legal and informal level) remains confusing. If you push me just a tad I’ll add that it is also quite racist and unfair in the legal sense. I mean what is this “one drop blah blah blah” other than overt racism? And how do they even know, say, when it comes to a perfectly white-looking Latino (or should that be ‘Hispanic’ instead? There’s yet another can of confusing worms) immigrant from Cuba, Argentina, Chile, Brazil or Costa Rica…just to mention a few LA nations with a high percentage of whites? Should they be subjected to a DNA test in order to determine their ‘race’? I mean beyond confusing it gets silly even.
As for incident with the old Lady I know fully grasp what you meant and no, I didn’t need to be there to understand what happened, you explained it quite well and I do agree that it wasn’t right in said context as she was ‘ignoring’ something she already knew. Namely your heritage. However, you ask and I quote: Is it wrong to call me black, do you think? and the only answer I can give you is, obviously, no of course not. But with a simple caveat: I’d do that here and in IRL if we ever met only because you’ve already made quite clear to us that that is how you want to be identified – amongst many other things of course. Otherwise from all of the other things you’ve said about yourself (i.e you could ‘pass’ for a Sicilian with a tight perm) if I were to meet you or someone else who fits those physical traits, well…I don’t think I’d volunteer to refer to you/them as a “black person” as I simply wouldn’t be sure. Nothing to do with being PC or avoiding “elephants in the room” mind you, it’s just that my life is taken me to many places and I’ve seen any number people from all kinds of backgrounds to be so clear-cut when defining someone else’s race. As an analogy I can offer the times when I’ve asked a few lady-friends that I hadn’t seen in years if they “were pregnant”…only to get an irritated and curt “no” for a reply for they had simply put on (lots) of weight since I’d seen them last. Oooops! “Earth swallow me now, please” doesn’t even begin to describe the feeling. Needless to say it has been a lesson learned – the hard way. Which is why, when in doubt about someone’s race, I simply won’t ascribe them one. It wouldn’t be uncommon for me to label a person like that (normally, someone – females mostly, though I have no problem admitting some dude might be good-looking – whose looks I like) as ‘exotic looking.’
Do you think that is insulting?
Now in the more general sense – as in the socioeconomic/racist situation – please, people, don’t mix bricks with apple-sauce! But of course I and many many more like me can obviously see that! Fer Christ’s sake I employ at least four people of said status – again, nothing unusual here where they make up most of the population – and I wouldn’t have any problem ‘coloring’ any one of them. But even knowing then for at least three years – the newest one – I wouldn’t ‘assign’ them any particular race. Why? Because other than the all-encompassing “indio/a, mulato/a and/or mestizo/a*” I leave it up to them to choose. And since it has only come up in conversation with one – my housekeeper, who self-describes as black – I have no reason to call them anything other than by their name and help them as much as I can. Just the fact that three of the four have been with since I got here five years ago ought to tell you they can’t be too unhappy with their jobs.
Beyond that one only need look at the disaster in N.O. to realize how unfair society still remains. And the fact that it is even more pronounced here and in many other Third World countries tells us that there’s still a lot of work to do. But in my humble opinion is has much more to do with the way The System is set-up (loads of uber-rich colored people here for instance. Just don’t ask how many of them they got that way. Nor most of the whites for that matter) than along strict racial divides.
*Not in usage here for the most part. “Indio/a” OTOH, prevails as a coverall for mixed-heritage.
John, you pretty much nailed when it comes to my confusion as to American thinking on this matter. But as you imply and I suggested before, that locked-box thinking is going to fall by the wayside as your society continues to mingle.
The social problems, not so much. Would that I could be more optimistic in that sense.
Not responding to anything in particular here, but did anyone happen to catch the New Hour on PBS a few days ago when they interviewed the (now grown-up) kids from Arkansas who were the first to integrate schools under Brown v BOE? My first thought (because I was reading this thread) was: Damn, those are some light skinned Black people! And then they turned the cameras on this one lady (I forget her name), and I assumed she was some White journalist or something, but turns out she was one of the Black kids (grown up, of course). Had I met her on the street, it never would have occurred to me that she wasn’t White.
That’s how crazy our system is. It’s not part of the legal system anymore, but the social custom still retains much of the “one drop rule” from back in the day. My sense is that things are changing a bit, especially when you get out of the South. Out here in CA, where bi-racial or even multi-racial people are very common, we’re pretty much used to the idea of people not being put into distinct racial boxes. I think most of the folks I hang out with are happy to think of anyone as whatever race that person self-identifies as (to the extent that it’s even important in the first place). And most of the bi-racial people I know self-identify as bi-racial. But then, you’d be hard pressed to find a more socially liberal place than the SF Bay area.
The one drop rule was born out of racism, no doubt about it. One would have to be ignorant of American history to think otherwise. The rule itself, though, I contend is just as valid as any other rule for assigning race.
It is my understanding that in a lot of South American countries, your racial membership is determined by your appearance. I also understand there to be a lot more categories in between black and white; there are “browns”, in other words. I’ve heard that it’s perfectly possible for you to have two siblings with the exact same parentage and one be classified in one race and the other put another. Is all of this right? Correct me if I’m wrong.
Just as the US system for race classification is bizarre to you, this system appears strange to me. I can’t imagine having a brother or sister cut from the same cloth that I am, but perceiving them as belonging in a different racial group because their skin happens to be a little darker or lighter than mine. You may see more validity in the way your culture categorizes people, but that doesn’t necessarily make it more valid. We’re still dealing with a social construct. Just one that works off a different set of rules. But then again, maybe race as a concept means something different here versus where you come from. So we may be speaking completely different languages, I don’t know.
But let’s address the question of fairness. Why is it unfair that I should be seen as black and not something else? One has to wonder: what am I missing out on being labeled this way or as opposed to some other way? Is the problem really that I’m called black and not mixed (or white)? Or is the problem really about perception? Ideally, a rose by any other name should still be perceived the same way. But it’s not. Not in our society. There is really no rational reason why being seen as black in spite of looking like a Sicilian with a tight perm should be considered “unfair”. Maybe inaccurate, depending on what system you’re using to classify me. But unfair? That would only make sense if there is something to be gained by being seen as non-black. Like I’m being saddled with an undeserved scarlett letter.
The fact that there is something to be gained by being seen as non-black is the problem. Not the fact that I’m seen as black. There’s nothing wrong with being seen as black, there’s nothing “unfair” about it, it is what it is. I embrace my black identity because if I didn’t, then I’d be giving credence to the notion that there is something wrong with calling myself black. There isn’t anything wrong with it all. It’s accurate and fair.
Which makes perfect sense, since you haven’t been programmed to view race the way most Americans have. Not knowing what to call me because of ignorance of our rules is not the same thing as knowing the rules but pretending they don’t exist in order to be “colorblind”.
Not really…just as long as you’re not leering and breathing heavily on me as you call me that. 
I think if race is defined more by what someone experiences, and if experiences tend to be more face-to-face than on paper, and if people get treated differently based on their exact skin darkness, it could make sense for people to consider themselves different races based on how they are treated. But if it’s more of an “either you’re black or you’re not” thing, which is more how I perceive white American attitudes, then the precise skin shade probably doesn’t matter all that much.
I agree. Furthermore, race to Americans seems to denote heritage and ethnic roots; appearance is a marker for that but not a determinant. It’s not just a system for labeling skin color, akin to classifying hair as blonde or brunette, or eyes as hazel or brown. It’s deeper than appearance. Always has been.
The thing that put you in bondage back in the day wasn’t your skin color. It was what your parents were racially.
– bolding mine.
Well I am going to have to disagree with you here as it doesn’t make a lick of sense (scientifically or otherwise) that a person that has 3/4 th of white heritage and only 1/4 th black, is by your nation’s definition – and as I’m seeing here, accepted by many of you – ‘black.’ I mean, WTF? Is a drop of black blood so powerful that it somehow ‘erases’ oodles of white ones? Makes not a lick of sense.
No, you are not. 'tis quite so. But I won’t bother expounding as I see that jsgoddess has done, IMHO, quite a good job of explaining the “whys.” I’ll just add that it also makes perfect sense from the scientific perspective of race as a “Social Construct.” That definition, BTW, is one that I completely agree with as regards my own, quite protracted experience with the topic.
IOW, outside of book-learning, it correlates with what I’ve seen and lived.
Well once more I’ll point to science as the ultimate arbiter. Ultimately there’s no such thing as “race,” but rather, as we seem to agree, a social construct. So in that sense surely you have lots more in common with some white or yellow cow-worker of yours than you do with whatever ancestors you might find in Africa if you went back far enough into your family tree.
BTW, just because I don’t understand/agree with the American race classification, doesn’t mean I don’t know it first hand. As I’ve pointed out on many occasion (though I certainly don’t expect you to know this) I’m twice-divorced from Americans, have an American born and bred son, a senior in HS, and studied and worked there for a combined total of well over a decade. It was just one of those (few) things that I never really assimilated nor integrated with.
Well if that’s what you are, nothing “unfair” about it and no two ways about it. I just continue to fail to understand why it appears to be such a big issue, that’s all. Now if someone – as jgodess mentions – is being subjected to any sort of mistreatment and/or racism due to their skin color, sure, then it IS an issue. And a big one at that – one that needs to be set right, like yesterday.
I agree with all the above…but have huge reservations about your conclusion of it being “accurate and fair” if only due to your own self-description. For if you want to go down that road it would actually be more accurate to mention that you also have Native American and White heritage. Otherwise no way in hell you could pass for a Sicilian…they might be darker than you, but there’s no Black African phenotype to them.
Too old to think with that head anymore. I prefer the aesthetics of it all now a days and would, more than likely, simply offer a gentlemanly compliment and leave it at that. Now a decade or two back…I wouldn’t have made that same promise. 
While I don’t really disagree with you on this (and I think you make an excellent point, btw), I don’t think you can separate the “unfairness” from the “problem with being Black” part. The reason African-Americans of mixed race are by default classified as Black is that we see our society as White and non-White. White is the “norm”, the preferred condition, and you get kicked out of the club if you have non-White ancestry (of pretty much any detectable or known amount).
So, if there hadn’t been something negative associated with being Black, then anyone of mixed race would be considered just that-- someone of mixed race. And we seem only to do that for Blacks. If a kid has one parent who is Asian and one who is European, he’s not called Asian. At least not in my experience. And Asians were also traditionally looked down on in the US, although that is a thing mostly of the past.
Of course, if there wasn’t something negative associated with certain races (or non-White races generally) then maybe we wouldn’t be classifying people in the first place!
Still, we humans are classifiers by nature, so unless we live in a world where there really is an equal distribution of skin color along a continuous spectrum, then we’re going to see skin color as a classifying element. And that’s the way it’s going to be in the US for a long time to come.
Being black doesn’t preclude having European and Native American ancestry. That can be recognized at the same time that I call myself black.
Typical conversation I find myself in:
“Hey ywtf. What are you?”
“I’m black.”
“Yeah, but you’re mixed with stuff.”
“I have a great great great granddad who was white and another great great great somebody who was Blackfoot Indian. All the rest of everybody in my family tree is black, as far as I know.”
Now the thing that confuses me, is that if someone looks at me and can see that I’m “mixed with stuff”, why do they even need to ask “what are you?”. If I say that I’m black, do they honestly think I’m saying I’m straight off the boat African? Of course not. They know I’m not 100% African, just like they know I’m not 100% white.
I’m not offended by the question of “what are you?”. But is this a question that would even be asked in South America, where your race is determined by what you look like? I suspect a lot Americans ask this question so that they can figure out what mental box to put you in. If you answer by saying “I’m mixed; dad’s white, mom is 75% black and 12.5% white and 12.5% Native American” I suspect you get put in a different box than someone who looks exactly the same way but simply says “I’m black”.
It could be that they just want to know what your ethnic heritage is, and “black” doesn’t really tell them that. They want to know the details. It might be, as you suggested earlier, that they want to know what box to put you in, or they might just be curious. If someone who was part Asian and part European told people he was Asian, he’d likely get a similar response-- you must be part something else, too, right?
It’s not entirely the same thing, but I get a similar reaction from my White acqaintences when they ask me my ethnic background. I just usually say “European” because my ancestors came from all over the place and my family never had an ethnic identity to any particular country in Europe. But people want to know if you’re Irish or Italian or German or English or whatever-- very rarely does someone not push me for more details. But the fact is, I honestly don’t know, so I can’t really say much other than a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
Actually, I doubt we’d even have race (at least as we know it) if being black didn’t carry a stigma. Since our whole system of race was invented to facilitate slavery, you can’t really remove one without removing or at least drastically modifying the other. Perhaps if racism didn’t exist we wouldn’t have the concept of “mixed race” all. People would be dark-skinned and light-skinned and everything in between, but that nomenclature would be just as loaded as if we were talking about eye and hair color. I don’t know. Most of people in the US who are called blacks today wouldn’t exist, that’s for certain. Because slavery wouldn’t have happened, if we lived in a world where being Black was stigma-free.
Thanks for making head explode from this hypothetical you just threw into the discussion, John!
Yup, that’s what I’m getting at. Now your head has exploded too.
Yeah, that’s a strong possibility. It may not seem like it, but I usually assume people are just being curious. Still, though, the question “what are you?” isn’t a good way of getting that kind of information out of me because it turns me into obstinate smartass. What I look like says it all, really.
'dunno about that. It also, more likely than not, makes you interesting to other people if only because you are not part of the norm. And if you’re pretty too boot all the more the reason to query you further. As good of an ice-breaker as you’re likely to find.
I know I used to my advantage a zillion time. For like I said, there is nothing intrinsically different about me if going solely by my physical appearance – pretty much a standard issue white guy, if a bit on the tall side. Until I said my name that is. That’s when all sorts of questions started pouring about my ethnicity (wild guesses, French! no, Scottish! hmm, Irish-Italian? and so forth), my “perfect English” and the like, for as both of you point out, people didn’t seem to be able to put me in any particular box. Yeah, sure, sometimes I thought it was rude for unlike John or you, my ancestry is much ado about nothing – we all originally hail from Asturias, ‘cept for a Basque great-great-pa’ on my mom’s side. That’s it basically. Or as much as I care to know about it anyway.
However, on the plus side, the interest raised did give me a chance to meet many people that, possibly, I wouldn’t have gotten to know otherwise. Of course the opposite (being called “Joe Smith”) would have saved me from two marriages. Oh well, got a great kid and a bunch of dates out of the whole deal. So overall I think the experience and the extra-attention were positive.
Thus if anything, if you’ve got it (whatever “it” is) use it.
But couldn’t you tell I’m not part of the “norm” just by looking at me? (Black people are already outside the norm, btw). Whether or not I call myself black or I call myself mixed, I’m still the same. I still look the same. My African, European, and Native American ancestry are all visible in my face regardless of if I make a point of telling you what’s there, right? So shouldn’t I still be “interesting”, regardless of me making a point of talking about great great great grands? I’m asking this sincerely.
There are a lot of black people that don’t have the opportunity in casual encounters to make themselves look “interesting” by talking about their non-black ancestors. Why? Because no one asks them “what are you?”. They are unambigiously black in appearance, and they get treated as “uninteresting” because of it. This, even if they have the same or higher level of diversity in their family tree that I have. There’s nothing unique or exotic about having a slavemaster in your upstream lineage, or a Native American, for that matter. It’s probably rarer to find someone who doesn’t.
Hmmm, I don’t want to use that kind of advantage. Not with race. Never in a million years would I want to make myself appear more palatable by laying claim to a faceless white ancestor who I wouldn’t know from Adam if he rose from the dead and knocked on my door, yelling “Go empty my chamber pot, bitch!”
I already have some advantages because of my Sicilian with a tight perm appearance; and I consider these advantages to be unfair, as I explained above. If someone needs me to acknowledge the obvious (that I’m not 100% African-derived) before they find me interesting, then I’m perfectly content to stay off their radar.