Slippery concepts

[jhetley]

Another random thought from the ongoing blog hooraw about racism (which is not a bad thing.) 

"Race" is such a chameleon word -- as little as a hundred years ago, "Irish" was considered to be a race, and a thoroughly inferior one at that. 

Published caricatures of the Irish were as simian as the worst depictions of blacks...

Comments

[wolfette]

and varies from place to place. In Scotland I could be done for "racist" abuse if I were to call someone "an English b*stard"

But in England anyone calling me a "Scottish b*stard" or making derogatory remarks about "Jocks" and "teuchters" would get off with it, because "the Scots aren't a race".

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

That's easily explained. "Scots" is historical fiction, whereas "English" exists in the real world.

[tobias-buckell.livejournal.com]

While that is true, around the end of the 1800s that stops, whereas the simian portrayal of blacks continues up in the late fifties and early sixties of this century. So race might be slippery, but in the Western world while Italians and Irish have been pulled into the fold, there are still outsiders.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. And there was that idiot bit about you having to _prove_ your "outsider" status...

[tobias-buckell.livejournal.com]

:-) Truth is after a lifetime of confusing people by looking white but being multi-racial I'm not particularly thrown off kilter, but saw that it would make an interesting blog post. I am used to having to explain this concept in person a ton and it's just part of my pre-programmed speech list :-)

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear that. I could see a person getting seriously steamed with such nonsense.

Maybe that's your (racial stereotype alert!) laid-back Caribbean ancestry showing?

[tobias-buckell.livejournal.com]

"Maybe that's your (racial stereotype alert!) laid-back Caribbean ancestry showing?"

More like cultural stereotype :-) I'm pretty laid back about it because I'm pretty secure in my identity. I need to post about the black woman I met who explained how a trip to the Caribbean changed her life. When she got down there her cabbie was black, the person she ordered dinner from was black, the doctor she visited when she got sick there was black, as was the cop who pulled her over for speeding. She said until then she always viewed herself as a representive for her race, and was constantly weighed under and reminded of how she was different and stood out, and so on, but for several weeks in the islands she was just an anonymous person until she opened her mouth and sounded like she was from the US. She said it turned her brain inside out and made her confident, calm, and assured.

A lot of people wonder why Caribbean immigrants who are black do so much better, and I'm willing to bet its that while we do have the whole post colonial thing going on, most immigrants do not have that crushing daily background this woman seemed to have from birth.

I grew up in a community that never really freaked out about my saying I was multi-racial, in fact, in the islands, some people who look at me and ask.

[ziactrice.livejournal.com]

Heh. But "white people are NEVER discriminated against!" as a black lady coworker told me several years ago.

Never mind that she, herself, told me I had 'back like a black lady' - which she intended as a compliment, but it really does say things about her assumptions - despite being true. And not the only black lady I've had tell me that, either. Sigh.

Then there was the Haiwaiian boy in school who hated my father, his former math teacher, so decided to use his knowledge of Tae Kwon Doe to leave shoeprint bruises all OVER my thighs and arms - and called me a haole while he was applying said beating.

Then there was the Pakistani professor who taught my Fluid Mechanics course sophomore year in college, who told me in front of the entire class the first day that I was: "taking the place a man could have." Never mind _I_ had paid for my spot and needed to make a living as much as any other male student.

Or the people in the SCA today who told me they hate it when people of Irish descent sing any of the true and historical songs about English repression, land-stealing, and outright starving out of the native Irish - because we're American now and we should just get over it. Sigh. Because you know, the American Indians should just 'get over' what was done to them, and apparently the Jews should just 'get over' WWII. Though I have to think they wouldn't usually be QUITE so eager to tell those two groups that to their faces, no one seems to mind pushing my nose in about still feeling some connection to my Irish descent.

It's weird.

[edschweppe.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of Olson Johnson's classic quote from Blazing Saddles (courtesy of IMDB)