Is "colorblindness" good, or even possible?

[wonky]

[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
You’ve have continually and rather unpalatably insulted Zoe
[/QUOTE]

Can someone point me to where these egregious insults are happening? I know I disagreed with her in another thread and she started shrieking that I was “trying to put her in the white hood of her enemies” which is a bit of a stretch.

[tomndebb]

TWEEEEET!!

I’m not sure why this particular thread has drifted into personal acrimony, but that will now come to an end.

No more observations regarding other posters’ intelligence, knowledge, or personal dispositions.

[ /Moderating ]

[FinnAgain]

jsgoddess: even without tom’s injunction or your strange, synesthetic claim that electrons on your screen are “shrieking”, I will not respond to your tangential question as you have ignored my direct response to you, posted in good faith, in the third response in the entire thread.

I asked you to, among other things, define the terms you used in your OP and to both support, and elaborate on, points of yours I had challenged. You did not respond.
Instead of the tangential issue you have just posted on, would you prefer to address my detailed and substantive response to your OP?

[tomndebb]

[QUOTE=FinnAgain]
your strange, synesthetic claim
[/QUOTE]
When I indicate that I do not want any more personal observations posted in a thread, I do not want to find posters weaseling past my injunction.

Your entire first paragraph was unnecessary and I trust that everyone posting here will refrain from further similar comments.

[ /Moderating ]

[Zoe]

you with the face: What could you possibly mean by this, if you WEREN’T saying the rule wasn’t enforced.

(quoting me)…" If the ‘one drop’ rule had been enforced, no belles with naturally curly hair would have been deemed suitable for marriage…"

Notice that I put quotation marks around one drop and not around all of one drop rule. It was the “one drop” part that wasn’t enforced, ywtf, because it couldn’t be. The rule – or rather the law was certainly enforced as far as they could determine it. But it never became an issue of proving that a person had just one drop of black blood and was therefore, black.

jsgoddess: Can someone point me to where these egregious insults are happening? I know I disagreed with her in another thread and she started shrieking that I was “trying to put her in the white hood of her enemies” which is a bit of a stretch.

you with the face, one of the advantages of being in your sixties is that no one else can tell you who you are. I know my weaknesses and strengths and I’ve talked about both here for a long time. I have not always been as I am now. And I have had adventures that would leave a lot of young women very envious.

Maybe as you grow older you will find some measure of peace with yourself.

jsgoddess, you’ve made a lot more sense in other threads.
linky

jsgoddess:

Originally Posted by Zoe:
The word black was not a distinguishing factor. I even absentmindedly complimented one of my lighter skinned students on the good tan that she had gotten over the summer when I saw her the second year.

Honestly, that sounds like a perfect illustration of monstro’s point. You didn’t see an individual student. You were so “color blind” that you started absentmindedly assuming everyone was like you. It’s definitely better than putting on a pointy hood or saying “I’m not racist but…” but it’s also ignoring people’s identities for the sake, in many cases, of a sort of artificial togetherness.

Do you use this reference “pointy hood” so often that you would forget? But wait. You did say that what I did was definitely better than putting on a pointy hood. :rolleyes: I can’t tell you how underwhelmed I am by that comment. How generous and nonjudgmental of you.

If I was aware of your race before, I didn’t remember it. But white is not always the default race. I’ve always have pictured certain posters here as people of color.

There have been so many assumptions made about me in this thread.

[FinnAgain]

[QUOTE=tomndebb]
When I indicate that I do not want any more personal observations posted in a thread, I do not want to find posters weaseling past my injunction.
[/quote]

I addressed the presentation of an argument and not a poster’s “intelligence, knowledge, or personal dispositions”. Zero Mustela type behavior.

But ah well. If you think it’s weaseling, I will ask for further clarification in the Pit thread that seems to have opened up.

[QUOTE=tomndebb]

Your entire first paragraph was unnecessary and I trust that everyone posting here will refrain from further similar comments.

[/QUOTE]

Pointing out that my legitimate challenge to the OP had been ignored for more then 75 posts wasn’t valid or necessary in pointing out that I would not answer her question and instead would like to have a good-faith post of mine finally addressed by the OP? It was unnecessary to say ‘I won’t answer your question until you respond to questions of mine that have been passed over for some time now?’

Bah.
In any case, on with the show.

On the topic of the “one drop” rule, it’s important to note that it was, depending on how you slice it, a scientific principle, a pseudo-scientific principle, a arbitrary and racist principle, a purely appearance based principle, and an ideological/social principle.

The issue was originally one of having verifiable black ancestry, it became something of a chimera:

The phenomenon known as “passing as white” is difficult to explain in other countries or to foreign students. Typical questions are: “Shouldn’t Americans say that a person who is passing as white is white, or nearly all white, and has previously been passing as black?” or “To be consistent, shouldn’t you say that someone who is one-eighth white is passing as black?” or “Why is there so much concern, since the so-called blacks who pass take so little negroid ancestry with them?”
Those who ask such questions need to realize that “passing” is much more a social phenomenon than a biological one, reflecting the nation’s unique definition of what makes a person black. The concept of “passing” rests on the one-drop rule and on folk beliefs about race and miscegenation, not on biological or historical fact.
[…]
It should now be apparent that the definition of a black person as one with any trace at all of black African ancestry is inextricably woven into the history of the United States. It incorporates beliefs once used to justify slavery and later used to buttress the castelike Jim Crow system of segregation. Developed in the South, the definition of “Negro” (now black) spread and became the nation’s social and legal definition. Because blacks are defined according to the one-drop rule, they are a socially constructed category in which there is wide variation in racial traits and therefore not a race group in the scientific sense.
[…]
As defined in physical anthropology and biology, races are categories of human beings based on average differences in physical traits that are transmitted by the genes not by blood.

The chimerical quality was largely due to a fallacious link between genetics and varieties of physical appearance and blood types. From the New Yorker link posted upthread:

Until recently, people like Daniel were identified simply as black because of a peculiarly American institution known informally as “the one-drop rule,” which defines as black a person with as little as a single drop of “black blood.” This notion derives from a long discredited belief that each race had its own blood type, which was correlated with physical appearance and social behavior

.

In actual use, the issue often hinged on subjective perceptions of appearance, and not objective “facts” of “racial” lineage or family trees. From the Virginia Racial Integrity Act:

If there is reasonable cause to disbelieve that applicants are of pure white race, when that fact is stated, the clerk or deputy clerk shall withhold the granting of the license until satisfactory proof is produced that both applicants are “white persons” as provided for in this act.
[…]
For the purpose of this act, the term “white person” shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian

In that context, “traces of any blood” and “reasonable cause to disbelieve that applicants are of pure white race” referred to appearances, not known family trees.

[tomndebb]

Zoe, let it go.

[ /Modding ]

[tomndebb]

[QUOTE=Finn Again]
Bah.
In any case, on with the show.
[/QUOTE]
You’d have been well to take this attitude before your first paragraphs in each of your last two posts.

Stick to the topic.

[ /Modding ]

[even_sven]

As a white American currently living in Cameroon, I gotta say I don’t think it’s possible. I live very far away from anyone who shares my culture. And while all Cameroonians are surely not the same and there is a huge variety of individuals in this society, not a single person in my village is an American, or will ever be able to interact with me the way an American does. It’s impossible to live every single day in a different culture and not have to generalize sometimes. There is no way I could treat a Cameroonian friend and American friend the same way. They’d simply get offended. It wouldn’t work.

We all come from some place different, and our entire beings reflect where we came from- none of us can seperate our values, beliefs, worldviews, whatever- from our background. This doesn’t mean everyone with the same backgrounds is the same, just that our backgrounds are an intimate and unseperable part of us. And there will always be things that people from a different background will never fully understand. This doesn’t just mean color, obviously. Class, location, religion, gender, family structure…everything is a part of it. But color is in there, too.

So what do we do? We accept each other. We recognize the tensions between generalizations and individuals. We keep an open mind, but recognize that there will be differences between people, though these difference are not something that is rigid. It’s not like someone is automatically one way because they are from a certain background- just that they will likely be different than someone from a different background. And I guess most importantly, we need to recognize these differences aren’t bad or something to be ashamed of. And then we do our best to live with each other with love and compassion and build a society where we are each respected as individuals.

[FinnAgain]

[QUOTE=even sven]
As a white American currently living in Cameroon, I gotta say I don’t think it’s possible. I live very far away from anyone who shares my culture. And while all Cameroonians are surely not the same and there is a huge variety of individuals in this society, not a single person in my village is an American, or will ever be able to interact with me the way an American does. It’s impossible to live every single day in a different culture and not have to generalize sometimes. There is no way I could treat a Cameroonian friend and American friend the same way. They’d simply get offended. It wouldn’t work.
[/quote]

Suppose you had a Cameroonian friend who was raised in America, or an American friend who had been raised in Cameroon, or a cultural anthropologist who was immersed in an alternate culture and dedicated to experiencing and documenting how it worked and who was a descriptivist rather than prescriptive in their approach to such things, or any other varying individual that might in some way break the mold … would it really not be possible to get out from a generalization?
Highly unlikely is not the same as impossible, after all.

[QUOTE=even sven]

We all come from some place different, and our entire beings reflect where we came from- none of us can seperate our values, beliefs, worldviews, whatever- from our background. This doesn’t mean everyone with the same backgrounds is the same, just that our backgrounds are an intimate and unseperable part of us.
[/quote]

What’s your basis for making those claims? Conscious choice along with numerous other variables would have to enter into it somewhere, otherwise those with the same background would be fungible. And even if we are influenced by a background, it doesn’t mean that influence is universal or inexorable.
Likewise, people who come from different backgrounds can arrive at the same values, beliefs, worldviews, etc…
If two people can have the same backgrounds and have different values, beliefs, worldviews etc… and two people can come from different backgrounds and wind up with the same values, beliefs, worldviews, etc… that does indeed tell us that you can separate someone from their backgrounds to a certain degree. The limits and nature of that separation would then be determined experientially and experimentally.

[QUOTE=even sven]

And there will always be things that people from a different background will never fully understand. This doesn’t just mean color, obviously. Class, location, religion, gender, family structure…everything is a part of it. But color is in there, too.
[/quote]

You are making a very definitive set of extremely strong claims, saying some things will “never” happen, saying that there is not even a possibility that some things will happen, ever. The burden of proof is on you to support that claim. What support do you have to support such absolutist positions?

[QUOTE=even sven]

So what do we do? We accept each other. We recognize the tensions between generalizations and individuals. We keep an open mind, but recognize that there will be differences between people, though these difference are not something that is rigid. It’s not like someone is automatically one way because they are from a certain background- just that they will likely be different than someone from a different background.
[/quote]

But that’s my point. If they’re not rigid or deterministic, and things are likely rather than inexorable, then flexibility is allowed and statements like “never” and that things aren’t even “possible” are not justified.

The liminal space in any situation is often the most fruitful, and shouldn’t be ignored.

[QUOTE=even sven]

And I guess most importantly, we need to recognize these differences aren’t bad or something to be ashamed of. And then we do our best to live with each other with love and compassion and build a society where we are each respected as individuals.
[/QUOTE]

Well, yes to the second sentence, a resounding (yet qualified) “heck no” to the first sentence.
Sometimes, differences are bad and are something to be ashamed of. During the 20th century, if someone was a Nazi due to how they were raised/indoctrinated/what-have-you, that would be bad and something to be ashamed of, especially if they were pushing Jews into the gas chambers.
If a time machine zapped you into the time and place of the Aztecs and they sacrificed you, that would be bad even though it was the norm under their culture/religion.
People whose culture/upbringing helped them become gay-bashers are both bad people and have something to be ashamed of.

I’m not sure if you’re advocating hard cultural relativism or if I’m misunderstanding you, but if I’m not misunderstanding you, I believed you have advanced an untenable position.

[monstro]

Interesting op-ed.