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elionwyrBack in March, Edward James Olmos made a speech about race to the U.N.
I was thinking about that, and - well - about a lot of things today, whilst working amongst the plants...about how this is such a pivotal time in this country's development, about the question of race, about how far, and how pitifully little, we've managed to progress in the questions and issues of race.
Personally speaking, I don't prefer to define myself as 'white'. I'm a mix of lots of races - enough so that I don't look ethnic. I've been told my whole life that I look just like so-and-so's daughter, or such-and-such's niece. I am apparently a very generic looking person; that, or I have a world record number of doppelgangers running around this planet!
Going by the definition of "white people" or "caucasian race", I more closely fit 'caucasian', as the description states "The term Caucasian (or Caucasoid) race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.[1] Historically, the term has been used to describe the entire population of these regions, without regard necessarily to skin tone..
Interesting, yes?
Now, I can claim 'caucasian' for the most part because my ancestry includes Europeans as well as Russians. White? Well...ya know, I have Irish ancestors. And the Irish weren't always considered 'white'. I have vaguely confirmed Native American ancestry. There's that pesky Jewish ancestry. (My father was not given his father's last name because my grandmother's family didn't want him to have a Jewish last name. Nice!) I also have a few relatives that have active memberships in the Daughters of the American Revolution.
So, no. I don't actually, in my heart of hearts, define myself as 'white.' I define myself as 'human.' And until they put that as an option on the check-boxes where employers et al ask you to choose a race, I'm gonna keep on selecting 'prefer not to say.'
Family-wise, well, we've a pretty varied mix of histories. Some of my people were slave owners. Some were 'Indian hunters.' We have (if family legend is correct) a wanted murderer hiding in the tree. Some were kidnapped by the Shawnee - at least one woman was returned for being too 'ornery.' My paternal grandmother's family was racist, and I was raised with a bit of that around me.
But you see, I was lucky. As a child, my next door neighbors were a mixed couple - good people who let us kids play with their dogs and visit in their living room in a way that kids today would be warned against doing. Between their marriage and the influence of my mother and her friends, I grew up believing that love is simply love. Gender and skin tone don't matter; hearts do.
As a result of my mother's influence on my life, I had a political awareness at an early age. I'm very very grateful to her for that, because I saw what living in an isolated town did to my peers. I attended women's music festivals and gay and lesbian events. I listened to Melanie, Holly Near, and Cris Williamson songs and I grew up believing we're all wonderfully varied and absolutely equal. I grew up hopeful, longing to join The Great Peace March, instead participating in walks to stop world hunger and marches on Washington.
When kids from urban Reading were bussed into our school, I didn't understand why they were so insular. Neither did I understand why my classmates acted oddly towards them. (I get it now.) Some of those kids became my friends. Considering how shy I am, that's a small miracle! *laugh*
Too shy to actually be a hippy, I had perhaps more of a hippy's heart than many in my social circle. I am not a racist. I can be a sexist. I'm working on that. (A bit ironically, one of my best friends is a self-confessed racist. It leads to some really awkward moments. But he, too, is working on it.)
I've had lovers that were..not as white as they looked, shall we say. I've listened to their stories and their family histories - seen the shock when one of them learned his great grandfather was an overseer - and again I am so grateful to have learned from their tales.
I've lived in neighborhoods where I was definitely the minority. I've had doors literally slammed in my face because of my skin colour; I've been on public transit listening to the people around me shout about 'the white devil' and hoped they weren't going to aim their hatred at me. I worked for many years in an office environment where I was one of maybe three 'white' people, and..it took years, but eventually found a peace with my coworkers. My middle management boss told us how he'd never spoken to a white woman before he took this job. My supervisor, Bertha, and I discussed hair differences and sometimes challenged each other about our assumptions about each other's races. I had a great discussion one day with a coworker who wanted to know why I'd taken out the French braid my hair had been arranged in the day before. (Ah...'white' hair VS 'black' hair..) We taught each other a lot, and - yet again - I'm so grateful to have had those opportunities for understanding.
I challenged that same employing company when they laid off 35 black women with no word to the company. I hired black haunt actors despite being told not to - I told my boss I refused to follow that direction. Later that year, I went to work on Halloween with wrist braces, hard pieces of plastic, strapped to my hands, ready to defend "my" kids if need be, if there was violence that night. Because there could have been - this was a tough neighborhood and we knew customers were armed. I was ready to take a bullet for "my" kids...the whole varied lot of them.
I have been told I am 'like a Muslim woman' by an Egyptian who I suspect was simply surprised to learn that not all American women are bra-burning feminazis. I have been told I write poetry like a black woman because white women aren't emotional - this, by author Yoshua Barak.
I have lived a life of activism. I have always striven to promote understanding and communication.
Now, obviously, here on LJ we're all just pixels on a screen. Our histories don't follow our text. So having someone - or several someones - not know my cultural resume is understandable.
That said..I hit a point a few days ago where I realized that I do not want to be a part of the dialogue of multiculturalism in fandom. This is very sad. But after being told, over a span of time, that I am not the desired audience at science fiction conventions because of the colour of my skin (despite, ya know, the fact that more often than not I'm helping to make that convention happen); after having negative and offensive assumptions made about me and how I handle my LJ; after being told to go talk to 'white allies' who didn't have the answers I was looking for and indeed apparently led me down a long path of misunderstanding in the first place; after having it suggested that my wish to have a dialogue amounts to my wanting a "Special Black Friend"...I'm done.
It's funny. I read that accusation, a few days ago, and all I could think of was my supervisor back in Philly, and all our discussions about race over the course of 12 years of working together. I imagined walking into her office and saying, "Hey, Bertha, guess what so-and-so just said?" I can hear her laugh. And ya know, no one laughed at that phrase in that discussion. It was, apparently, a justified and appropriate statement, and I was the wrong one for taking exception to it.
It's for that reason, ultimately, that I've stepped out of the dialogue. And while I'm posting this, I'm screening comments, because, just as I have not entertained the varied trollish attacks sent earlier this week, I will not entertain negative or inflammatory responses here. My journal, my rules.
I will continue to practice activism and cultural awareness, and it won't be the kind being discussed elsewhere. I'll promote gay rights; I'll be an advocate for RAWA; I will do the work of the 'white ally', as I have for most of my life, though - again - I do not claim the title of 'white' and thus far I'm kinda squiffy about that whole ally label in general.
Nope. Y'all can have your debates and arguments about racism in fandom.
I'll be over here, being human.
If we can't laugh, if we can't dance, I don't want to be a part of your revolution.
http://www.playingforchange.com
I was thinking about that, and - well - about a lot of things today, whilst working amongst the plants...about how this is such a pivotal time in this country's development, about the question of race, about how far, and how pitifully little, we've managed to progress in the questions and issues of race.
Personally speaking, I don't prefer to define myself as 'white'. I'm a mix of lots of races - enough so that I don't look ethnic. I've been told my whole life that I look just like so-and-so's daughter, or such-and-such's niece. I am apparently a very generic looking person; that, or I have a world record number of doppelgangers running around this planet!
Going by the definition of "white people" or "caucasian race", I more closely fit 'caucasian', as the description states "The term Caucasian (or Caucasoid) race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the indigenous populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Asia, Central Asia and South Asia.[1] Historically, the term has been used to describe the entire population of these regions, without regard necessarily to skin tone..
Interesting, yes?
Now, I can claim 'caucasian' for the most part because my ancestry includes Europeans as well as Russians. White? Well...ya know, I have Irish ancestors. And the Irish weren't always considered 'white'. I have vaguely confirmed Native American ancestry. There's that pesky Jewish ancestry. (My father was not given his father's last name because my grandmother's family didn't want him to have a Jewish last name. Nice!) I also have a few relatives that have active memberships in the Daughters of the American Revolution.
So, no. I don't actually, in my heart of hearts, define myself as 'white.' I define myself as 'human.' And until they put that as an option on the check-boxes where employers et al ask you to choose a race, I'm gonna keep on selecting 'prefer not to say.'
Family-wise, well, we've a pretty varied mix of histories. Some of my people were slave owners. Some were 'Indian hunters.' We have (if family legend is correct) a wanted murderer hiding in the tree. Some were kidnapped by the Shawnee - at least one woman was returned for being too 'ornery.' My paternal grandmother's family was racist, and I was raised with a bit of that around me.
But you see, I was lucky. As a child, my next door neighbors were a mixed couple - good people who let us kids play with their dogs and visit in their living room in a way that kids today would be warned against doing. Between their marriage and the influence of my mother and her friends, I grew up believing that love is simply love. Gender and skin tone don't matter; hearts do.
As a result of my mother's influence on my life, I had a political awareness at an early age. I'm very very grateful to her for that, because I saw what living in an isolated town did to my peers. I attended women's music festivals and gay and lesbian events. I listened to Melanie, Holly Near, and Cris Williamson songs and I grew up believing we're all wonderfully varied and absolutely equal. I grew up hopeful, longing to join The Great Peace March, instead participating in walks to stop world hunger and marches on Washington.
When kids from urban Reading were bussed into our school, I didn't understand why they were so insular. Neither did I understand why my classmates acted oddly towards them. (I get it now.) Some of those kids became my friends. Considering how shy I am, that's a small miracle! *laugh*
Too shy to actually be a hippy, I had perhaps more of a hippy's heart than many in my social circle. I am not a racist. I can be a sexist. I'm working on that. (A bit ironically, one of my best friends is a self-confessed racist. It leads to some really awkward moments. But he, too, is working on it.)
I've had lovers that were..not as white as they looked, shall we say. I've listened to their stories and their family histories - seen the shock when one of them learned his great grandfather was an overseer - and again I am so grateful to have learned from their tales.
I've lived in neighborhoods where I was definitely the minority. I've had doors literally slammed in my face because of my skin colour; I've been on public transit listening to the people around me shout about 'the white devil' and hoped they weren't going to aim their hatred at me. I worked for many years in an office environment where I was one of maybe three 'white' people, and..it took years, but eventually found a peace with my coworkers. My middle management boss told us how he'd never spoken to a white woman before he took this job. My supervisor, Bertha, and I discussed hair differences and sometimes challenged each other about our assumptions about each other's races. I had a great discussion one day with a coworker who wanted to know why I'd taken out the French braid my hair had been arranged in the day before. (Ah...'white' hair VS 'black' hair..) We taught each other a lot, and - yet again - I'm so grateful to have had those opportunities for understanding.
I challenged that same employing company when they laid off 35 black women with no word to the company. I hired black haunt actors despite being told not to - I told my boss I refused to follow that direction. Later that year, I went to work on Halloween with wrist braces, hard pieces of plastic, strapped to my hands, ready to defend "my" kids if need be, if there was violence that night. Because there could have been - this was a tough neighborhood and we knew customers were armed. I was ready to take a bullet for "my" kids...the whole varied lot of them.
I have been told I am 'like a Muslim woman' by an Egyptian who I suspect was simply surprised to learn that not all American women are bra-burning feminazis. I have been told I write poetry like a black woman because white women aren't emotional - this, by author Yoshua Barak.
I have lived a life of activism. I have always striven to promote understanding and communication.
Now, obviously, here on LJ we're all just pixels on a screen. Our histories don't follow our text. So having someone - or several someones - not know my cultural resume is understandable.
That said..I hit a point a few days ago where I realized that I do not want to be a part of the dialogue of multiculturalism in fandom. This is very sad. But after being told, over a span of time, that I am not the desired audience at science fiction conventions because of the colour of my skin (despite, ya know, the fact that more often than not I'm helping to make that convention happen); after having negative and offensive assumptions made about me and how I handle my LJ; after being told to go talk to 'white allies' who didn't have the answers I was looking for and indeed apparently led me down a long path of misunderstanding in the first place; after having it suggested that my wish to have a dialogue amounts to my wanting a "Special Black Friend"...I'm done.
It's funny. I read that accusation, a few days ago, and all I could think of was my supervisor back in Philly, and all our discussions about race over the course of 12 years of working together. I imagined walking into her office and saying, "Hey, Bertha, guess what so-and-so just said?" I can hear her laugh. And ya know, no one laughed at that phrase in that discussion. It was, apparently, a justified and appropriate statement, and I was the wrong one for taking exception to it.
It's for that reason, ultimately, that I've stepped out of the dialogue. And while I'm posting this, I'm screening comments, because, just as I have not entertained the varied trollish attacks sent earlier this week, I will not entertain negative or inflammatory responses here. My journal, my rules.
I will continue to practice activism and cultural awareness, and it won't be the kind being discussed elsewhere. I'll promote gay rights; I'll be an advocate for RAWA; I will do the work of the 'white ally', as I have for most of my life, though - again - I do not claim the title of 'white' and thus far I'm kinda squiffy about that whole ally label in general.
Nope. Y'all can have your debates and arguments about racism in fandom.
I'll be over here, being human.
If we can't laugh, if we can't dance, I don't want to be a part of your revolution.
http://www.playingforchange.com
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 03:53 am (UTC)And a smidge Native American, and Russian, and Scots, and Irish, but it's the Puerto Rican that's most of it.
What genes to I get?
The white ones. Very, very white.
I also grew up as something of a nomad. 12 schools before I graduated, more after. I've been the victim of race-based crime, though I didn't see it that way until nearly 20 years later, when somebody pointed it out to me when I told them the story. I'm also pretty darned "color-blind" except to notice the beauty of a skin-tone. I do admit to a big cultural divide, because I didn't grow up in any communities with a lot of black people. I understand Native American and Hispanic stuff much better. Given where I currently live and work, this sometimes leads to me looking like a deer in headlights. But I live and learn. I love to learn about people.
Was that sufficiently rambly? Make ANY sense?
no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 03:55 am (UTC)(Thank you for responding!)
ETA: I was reminded of this, rereading your post:
I did grow up in a mostly-white neighborhood, which I alluded to above. And man, I didn't understand "Fat Albert" at all until I'd lived in Philly for a few years! I just - I had no idea why people liked that cartoon, I didn't relate to it, and I was really surprised when my Philly friends described it as something they enjoyed/found funny.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 05:18 am (UTC)I was raised for part of my childhood in a lily white upper class neighborhood, then experienced a boarding school that was much more diverse racially. I was taught by my parents about race in what was then a unique way; I learned about people of color by learning about those who achieved greatness in spite of society at the time. I even carried a clipping about Dr Chas. Drew (a personal Hero) in my wallet and consider his death a warning to my actions.(The clipping was eventually destroyed due to my getting soaked on an EMS call.)
I then entered the military and met folks of all backgrounds, many who I came to consider friends. I remember getting the instruction that there was only one color in the USAF; Blue.
I noted that I was unusual in that I never noticed color as important, I had learned to note people by their actions and how they presented themselves.
Later, I worked in Emergency Services and learned the simple fact that I was the one different because of my color. I even worked with POC as partners and came to understand some of the feelings that were present in their community.
I also was able to explain that my direct ancestor had been uprooted from his home and brought to this country without wanting to. (Hessians drafted by riding into a village and gathering up all able bodied folks and then you are in the Army, this is circa 1700's)
I was welcomed into a black church for Christmas Eve services by a work partner and also into his Family home for Holiday dinners. I returned the favor and I think we both grew from the experience.
My approach towards race is to follow the instructions of Dr. King, that its character not color.
What saddens me is there are those who wish to keep their own power by preventing a resolution between the disparate groups in this country. There are those who 'hustle' race in each race community, and use this to keep thier own power. This has caused the various groups to not be willing to come and learn from one another and led to a division of cultures and values.
I too, do not wish to be a part of the discussion of Multiculturalism in fandom, mainly because I feel it is a continuation of what I see happening in society, and do not want to be judged by the color of MY skin as anyone who does that, truly has discounted who I am and what I have experienced.
From the joy I had with a black woman as a lover, to having a 15 year old die in my arms after a firebombing, to wading into swift water in a storm looking for a hispanic child, as I was the only one who understood what the people were saying in Spanish.
To the men and women that I stood perimeter duty with in harsh German winters, to shocking my work partner's family by digging in to a plate of chitlin's and greens without blinking, and then watching him deal with the concept of haggis.
It is truly the 'content of the character', not the color of the skin. If I have expierenced any 'White Priveledge', it is the privelidge of knowing so many disparate people.
YIS,
WRI
no subject
Date: 2009-05-30 12:52 am (UTC)