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Colored -> Black -> African-American -> Person of Color

  
  

Page: 12(3)

 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
02:08 / 28.12.04
Well, is it not qualitatively different in the reaction it elicits? This subject is covered at some length in the preceding thread.
 
 
PatrickMM
03:38 / 14.02.05
Bringing this one back, because I just found it again.

And just to clarify, the thing that bothers me is that it seems that only non-white ethnic groups create organizations

I don't know... Skull and Bones?

I think you've answered your own question. Why do you need a white person's club when the US kind of *is* a white person's club, whether that white person is French-American, British-American or German-American. Likewise, you get to identify as simply a "person" partly because the mechanisms by which personhood are constructed are canted towards assuming that you are the default.

I guess my point is there's no need for clubs based on ethnicity at all, not that we'd need a white person's club to match up with a Korean club. It's the idea that because people's ancestors are all from the same place, they have some kind of connection that makes them worthy of gathering together in a club.

So, first up I would question your idea that in a perfect world race is not thought of at all, just because I don't understand exactly what you mean by this. Race, and the differences between race, provide us with cultural diversity, and boiling everything down to a default "non-racial" mass may not be desirable. That is, somebody might actively enjoy the sense of attunement to a broader culture that they get from being an Asian-American, or from having been born to parents who grew up in a different country. Likewise their identity as Muslims, say, might be supplemented by their identity as Arabs or African-Americans. Question being, is this a good, positive thing, or is it culturally divisive? And if so, whose culture?

What I'm trying to get at in the 'world of just people' would be a world where you could choose what defines you, rather than having it forced on you. So, being a Muslim would be a choice, whereas being Arab isn't. There's something connecting everyone who's a Muslim, whereas there's nothing inherently different between someone who's an Arab and someone who's white, just the differences imposed by society, based on stereotypes about different types of people.

I would be suspicious of the idea of everyone just being "people", unless one could be absolutely sure that the metric being applied was not actually white, straight, normal people, which right now I don't think would necessarily be the case

I'd agree. It's much easier for someone who's white to say, race should be a non-factor, because you don't have to deal with it as a factor in the way people see you. Race is only a perception created by society, a society that has chosen white/straight as its default. But, I think things like having clubs based on ethnicity enforces the idea that white is normal and everyone else has to gather together, because they're somehow different, in a way that goes beyond the physical. It's self segregation.
 
 
PatrickMM
03:54 / 14.02.05
Might it not be that black people might want to watch black people on television? And, since the mainstream channels wnat to get the best possible value out of their advertising, and their advertisers tend not to want shows with a primarily black focus, because they are worried that a primarily black focusd means a primarily black audience, and black people are traditionally a lousy demographic for advertisers. BET started off as a channel playing music videos by black artists at a time when MTV basically didn't, remember. Again, if everyone was to watch "People TV", then the economic and social factors currently governing how television functions would have to change. I'm not sure ethnic minorities in the USA should make the first move by accepting uncritically media in which they are represented as supporting characters, on the grounds that, hey, everyone's just people and it just so happenes that the people who get the starring roles are a bit less tan than their wisecracking people chums...

I feel like , because of both prejudice imposed by white society, and notions of social responsibility, almost all movies/TV shows by minorities in the context of a larger majority society, have to be about their experience as a minority, rather than the experience as a person. Here, I'd point to one example and that's Asian film. I watch films by someone like Wong Kar-Wai or Chan-wook Park and I can relate to the characters, and I see a huge amount of myself in them, despite being a different and being from a radically different culture. I can relate with these films as much as something made here in the States.

However, I feel like if Wong Kar-Wai were making films here, he wouldn't be able to make the same films, featuring an all Asian cast, without addressing the issue of their Asian-ness, and this gets to the core of the problem. Can a minority group represent themselves as people not solely defined by their minority status in the context of a larger majority society? I'd like to think that one day, yes, it will be possible, to be defined by who you are as a person, not by your racial minority status.

So, that's my whole point, that groups would be based on mutal chosen interest, rather than on the ethnicity given to you when you were born.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
08:01 / 14.02.05
Yeah, but at this stage, as I think we both agree, the experiences you will share with people may well be affected by your race. So, you might want to hang out with Asian-Americans if you are Asian-American because they and only they can provide a shared experience of growing up Asian-American in the US. That doesn't disqualify you from having Asian-American friends, nor they from having you as a friend. It just means they are acknowledging that there are certain shared experiences that Asian-Americans have with other Asian-Americans that they will not have with non-Asian Americans. The club structure is, at that stage, just a handy way of organising socially.

To compare. A fair few friends of mine are women, with the same colour skin that I have. They have access to a set of experiences - of growing up girls, in effect - that I don't. So, if friend A wants to talk about Classics, or about experiences of a university we both attended, I'm a great person to talk to. For other things, maybe less so. There are even events where, as somebody genotypically or physically male (and that's a whole other question), I am excluded, in order to guarantee an environment sympathetic to certain elements shared by everybody there. There is a limit to how far I can be just one of the girls - yes?

So, if you want to abolish social groups formed by Asian-Americans, our hypothetical Asian-American might ask whether you plan to facilitate that by going back in time and making sure that their Asian-Americanness was not something for which they were ever made to feel different or treated differently. Your understanding of these clubs is that they are only meeting because their ancestors all come from the same place. I suspect it may be a bit more complex than that.

Which is where the problem lies. To say "I hope one day that cultural choices will in no sense be tied to racial origin" is one thing, but to say "I find the way my university's Asian-American contingent hang out together annoying" is another, and they mean radically different things. To look at your Wong Kar-Wai example, how about a film like The Wedding Banquet? That's based around a largely Asian/Asian-American cast. Does it address the issue of their Asian-ness? What does that mean? Certainly, it deals with the experience of coming from a Chinese or Taiwanese culture in a country that largely does not - so, your Chinese parents don't know you're gay, but your American friends do, for example, and what that means for you - but I think that, having distinguished race and culture above, you are conflating them here. Does it:

represent (Chines Americans/people of Asian origin living in ther US) as people not solely defined by their minority status in the context of a larger majority society?

I think it does. However however, I think the dichotomy you are drawing between "experience as member of a minority" and "experience as a person" is false, as it demands, for example, that an Asian-American comic ignores the fact that their experience of bneing a person may well be tied in to their experience of being a member of an ethnic or cultural minority.

Put another way: if Wong Kar-Wai were somehow transformed into a white American, with the cultural experience of growing up in America, working as a filmmaker in America, why would this new Wong Kar-Wai cast Asian or Asian-American actors? Is one of the reaons why you can empathise so easily with characters in Wong Kar-Wai films because they share with you an experience of belonging to a culture that does not have to explain itself or experience non-normative treatment within its society?

To sum up:

So, that's my whole point, that groups would be based on mutal chosen interest, rather than on the ethnicity given to you when you were born.

Right now, I'm not sure that a shared ethnicity is invalid as a mutual chosen interest - I can choose, for example, to learn Welsh, to support London Welsh, to join societies for people of Welsh ancestry and discuss the heritage and culture of Wales, I can take an interest in Welsh politics and want to talk to other people with a similar relationship to Wales as I have about what is going on in Wales... these are all mutual chosen interests that fall out of my Welshness and how it interacts with myself, my relationship to Wales and my relationship to the dominant culture of the society I inhabit (England). If you want etnicity to play no part whatsoever in culture or acculturation, then how do you do that without disadvantaging people who may want to discuss a shared but heterodox cultural heritage (and you don't get many white Americans with a shared heritage of growing up Chinese-American, for example) rather than, say, snowboarding? Where is the starting point?
 
 
alas
00:00 / 16.02.05
Mary Louise Pratt, in an article I think you can google and find pretty easily called "arts of the contact zone," calls these areas of our culture "safe houses." This society that I live in is not particularly safe for some groups--it's experienced as physically and spiritually dangerous. So people need "social and intellectual spaces where groups can constitute themselves as horizontal, homogeneous, sovereign communities with high degrees of trust, shared understandings, temporary protection from legacies of oppression.”

So they can then go back into the "contact zone"--the broader society where different groups and cultures clash and disagree and have differing degrees of power. But this is a hard place to be, and it's harder for some people than others, because some people are simply more protected in my culture than others are. So non-dominant "groups need places for hearing and mutual recognition, safe houses in which to construct shared understandings, knowledges, claims on the world that they can then bring into the contact zone.”

Here's a little essay called "Arts of the Safe House" by one Elizabeth Watkins that strikes me as well done, and she works in some Gloria Anzaldua, who I quite like, may she rest in peace.

A potentially flawed analogy: If I'm not in the water, in fear of drowning, I don't need a life preserver. But if someone else is, it's not "equality" to deny them one.
 
 
PatrickMM
02:06 / 16.02.05
To compare. A fair few friends of mine are women, with the same colour skin that I have. They have access to a set of experiences - of growing up girls, in effect - that I don't. So, if friend A wants to talk about Classics, or about experiences of a university we both attended, I'm a great person to talk to. For other things, maybe less so. There are even events where, as somebody genotypically or physically male (and that's a whole other question), I am excluded, in order to guarantee an environment sympathetic to certain elements shared by everybody there. There is a limit to how far I can be just one of the girls - yes?

Snipped the part above about Asian Americanness, but this is a good point. I always find it annoying when female friends of mine talk about the hotness of other guys, and I'd imagine stuff I talk about with my male friends can annoy the womenfolk among us.

I think it does. However however, I think the dichotomy you are drawing between "experience as member of a minority" and "experience as a person" is false, as it demands, for example, that an Asian-American comic ignores the fact that their experience of bneing a person may well be tied in to their experience of being a member of an ethnic or cultural minority.

That's basically what it boils down too. In our world at present, we're stuck with racial perceptions and stereotypes that limit our objective viewing of other people. So, people with similar racial makeup stick together because that would be a place where they can cease to be Asian or black or whatever, and just be a person. So, while to me, this club would be an example of emphasizing one's status as a unique racial group, to the people within the club, it is in fact removing this status, and turning them into just a person.

Right now, it's sort of a chicken and egg thing. The need for these clubs will exist as long as perception influenced by race exists, but I feel like the clubs also enforce an idea of racial otherness that perpetuates the very prejudice that creates it. N
 
 
Princess
10:50 / 07.07.06
The difference between "people of colour" and "coloured people" is wrist cuttingly sweet and so obvious it's unnoticable. The former is favoured now because the fact they are people is comes before the fact they have colour.

Both terms get on my tits massively. (Although I am ++ caucasian, so more than likely I'm missing a trick). What am I, transparent?
 
 
*
17:10 / 15.07.06
Yeah, I'm white too and I totally relate. The way people of color talk about each other makes me feel so sad and left out. That's why when my parents are away at Lake Tahoe I use their house to have ironic "Kill Whitey" parties for all my white hipster friends, where we dance to hip-hop and wear lots of "bling." (My black friend is invited but she's always busy.) Deep down, I just really want to be colorful too.*

* Lots of %'s. But the serious point of this post is that yes, white people can feel annoyed by efforts of people of color to be seen as people first rather than racial categories. Sometimes, we notice that occasionally people see us as members of a racial category first, although this is not institutionalized in the way that it is for people of color. White people often get really bent out of shape about the way "racism hurts us too!" while simultaneously telling people of color not to be so "angry" all the time or people just won't listen to them. Won't somebody think of the white people??? Please.
 
 
Princess
07:44 / 16.07.06
I think I see your point. But my anger isn't with black people, it's with the term. What's the point of it? Do we change the pattern of adjective use for all the other terms? When do I become a person-of-queerness? When can I refer to Spam as meat-that-is-luncheon. I just can't imagine it having effect. I doubt the efficiacy of the phrase as a tool for challenging racism. It doesn't fit naturally with the rest of speech, and so it only serves to further highlight difference.

To my ear it just sounds trite.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
10:40 / 16.07.06
Do we change the pattern of adjective use for all the other terms?

A man of qualities.
A woman of grace.
A band of the moment.

I don't see the problem.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:05 / 16.07.06
White people often get really bent out of shape about the way "racism hurts us too!" while simultaneously telling people of color not to be so "angry" all the time or people just won't listen to them.

Indeed. While it's true that racism ultimately hurts everyone in the long run, it's not hard to see when someone is DIRECTLY affected rather than as a knock-on effect.

I'm personally not too keen on the phrase "persons of colour", though that's a more aesthetic thing in that to me it sounds clumsy. However, it's really not up to me to decide what is appropriate for any group of which I am not a member to call itself.
 
 
Princess
15:43 / 16.07.06
I see your point Haus, good examples. I don't know, something about the terms just seems monstrosly artificial, it sounds clumsy. Maybe I'm confusing aesthetics with politics again.
 
  

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