I don’t even know what they would call it, or if it’s even possible to change skin pigment…
What if one doesn’t believe they identify with the race they’re born with?
I know it’s a different scenario than wanting to undergo surgery to change genders. I’m not comparing the two.
I’m just wondering on it’s own, how would you feel about such a desire for one to “change their race”?
It’s called “ethnic plastic surgery” or “racial reassignment surgery.” There have been people that have made the argument that if gender reassignment is okay, then racial reassignment should be okay, too. There are a couple of articles and documentaries about it on Google. I don’t know much about it.
There was the famous case of a journalist named John Howard Griffin who deliberately darkened his skin and passed himself off as a black man so that he could write about race relations in 1961. But that’s not quite the same thing as what you had in mind.
I’d feel a mixture of sympathy and exasperation–depending on who this individual is and how extreme they are willing to go to fulfill their desire. If they are just wanting to lighten or darken their skin a couple of shades, then ok. Not a choice I’d make for myself. But on the scale of things to get worked up about, it’s no biggie. However, if they are wanting to go from this to this? I’m not gonna lie, bro. My first thought will be “This person has got some issues.”
And to be honest, I’m probably always going to think of them as someone who has some issues. People who go to such extremes usually do. Would I be mean to them and demand they “act” like their race? No. But I’d have some uncharitable thoughts about them (especially if their behavior seemed in any way affected).
Chihuahua,
Wow, thank you for the information!
Ever seen old black-oriented magazines? They were chock-full of ads for products with names like “Bleach-O”.
It’s not uncommon for people of any race to want an “ethnic” feature altered. Once in a while, it’s medically necessary; some women of southern African descent have extremely large labia, which makes wearing pants and other similar Western clothing very uncomfortable, and they often have it reduced in size.
Julie Chen came out and announced that she had had eyelid surgery to appear less Chinese.
Except that was for professional reasons, not because"she “didn’t feel she was Chinese”.
Unless there’s medical research that indicates a real mental-health need (and I’m unaware that such research exists), then someone wanting such surgery would probably be out of luck unless they could find an unethical surgeon.
Yeah, the history of Asian eyelid surgery goes way back. Its actually extremely common. Most people assume it is be a use they want to look “white,” but usually they just want prettier eyes. They are not trying to pass themselves off as white, so I didn’t bother mentioning it.
Not sure about the ethics involved, but if Eva Tiamat Medusa can have her ears and nose removed so that she looks more like the dragon she believes herself to be, I have to assume that somebody could get surgery to appear like a race that actually exists on this planet.
I tried looking for papers on the topic. It appears that the idea of transracialism has been argued, but only as a hypothetical situation (and in the context of arguments over gender reassignment). I do see some people of message boards claiming to be transracial, but whether they are legitimate I can’t say. It appears that the concept of racial reassignment is either non-existent or so rare that it has not garnered much attention in the medical community.
There ARE many examples of people trying to pass as a different race or have their racial status legally changed, but they did so for social / political / financial reasons… Not because they “believed” they were a different race. This is from a 2006 article that examined the problem (philosophically) in the context of its relation to gender studies.
[QUOTE= Cressida J Heyes]
Most obviously, there are many cosmetic modifications—from hair-straightening treatments, to rhinoplasty, to eyelid surgery, to skin-lightening creams. Stated motivations for choosing these procedures, as things stand, rarely include “I want to become truly white” (or even, “I’ve always felt I was a white person trapped in a person of color’s body”). Such claims are somewhat implausible, first, as I have shown, because race is taken to be inherited in a way that sex is not. The claim that “I’ve always known I was really white inside” is unpersuasive in part because it implicates others; if one’s immediate forebears are not white, the claim risks being unintelligible. In part as a consequence, second, this ontology does not have an institutional psychiatric apparatus behind it. With race inhering both in the body and in ancestry, and transracialism lacking a diagnostic mechanism, the marketing of race-altering body modifications cannot play to individual essence to the extent that sex change can.
[/QUOTE]
What ethical issue is there? People have elective cosmetic surgery every day of the week, including surgery to modify or conform to ethnic norms. Jews get nose jobs, Asians get eye jobs, white folks get lip plumping… the list goes on and on.
Did she actually have a doctor perform the procedures? There are some extreme body mods done by people who aren’t doctors, which usually also means no anesthesia or painkillers.
Not my cup of tea, but apparently some people want extreme body mods enough to endure the pain.
Michael Jackson had a lot of plastic surgery over the years to make his features look less negroid (am I allowed to use that word?). He should have stopped at some point, because he just wound up looking grotesque.
What if someone wanted a “Race-Reconstructive surgery”?
So? Let them. If they have the desire and the means, then who cares? Not me, that’s who. People get tattoos and piercings, boob jobs, liposuction, anal bleaching all the time. None of it is my thing, but who am I to tell them what their thing is?
That wasn’t done by a surgeon, or even a doctor. That’s the work of Emilio Gonzalez, an extreme body modification artist. Interview here, with the sort of shocking pictures you’d expect to accompany an interview with an extreme body modification artist who removes peoples’ ears and noses: [spoiler]http://www.frrrkguys.com.br/a-talk-with-emilio-gonzalez-about-extreme-body-modifications/[/spoiler]
Could an extreme body modification artist do the procedures necessary for ethnic plastic surgery? I have no idea.
Yeah, I was going to mention him. He certainly didn’t look black after awhile.
I suspect quite a few people have plastic surgery to “reduce” their ethnic look. And an astonishing number of white people toast or dye themselves in an apparent effort to not have white skin.
Absolutely. Look at how many young women have “Jewish noses” until their teens.
Yeah, but they’re not making the effort to look like another ethnic group. They’re making the effort to look like tanned White people.
Race scarcely even exists independent of our socially shared ideas of it. Clusters of biologically reproducible recurrent traits with no boundaries or dividing lines aside from those maintained socially.
Hence it is an identity factor.
The person who “believes themselves to be some other race” is essentially a person who observes (accurately or not) that they would fit in better and be more accurately seen as they see themselves if they could present as that other race. And since we do indeed have socially shared notions of race, the person who believes this could indeed believe it accurately.
I have no problem with it unless it is being done cynically in order to qualify for reparative or compensatory benefits. I would be supportive of a transrace person.
Furthermore I’m at least more inclined than not to believe that our more stupid ideas about race will wither and die more quickly if it were to become generally understood that people can transition to another race, that racial identity is somewhat fluid.
Is anyone who actually wants it done advocating for this, or is it(for the most part)brought up by those who are trying to compare this hypothetical surgery to sexual reassignment surgery in an attempt to trivialize the latter?
