I made a rather lengthy edit to the unstructured and not-well-arranged comment I wrote whilst dashing about.
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So, the topic hinges on acceptance by a community. A community made up of individuals. If you are open and clear about yourself and individuals still cannot accept you, perhaps they do not fully represent their community with the authority of a âtrueâ member. Perhaps there are no true members but a feeling of connection amongst individuals, individuals who will value that connection through things like trust and clarity. And probably not through protracted and deliberate obfuscation.
But fuck everyone with their âplasticâ nonsense. People hide behind the others with frightening alacrity when they realise their personal behaviour is unacceptable, one to one.
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Thereâs a black guy who lives near me who is a rasta. He speaks in Jamaican patois and has a rasta name. Only thing is, heâs actually from Birmingham. Is he being open and honest about himself using the symbols of rastafarianism to speak of his identity, or is he engaging in protracted and deliberate obfuscation? This is the problem, the behaviours can be interpreted either way depending upon the presumption you make about the actual situation and the motives of the people in it.
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I speak to my parents in a different voice than I speak to my Granny and in a different voice than I speak to my friends and all of those are different to the voice I use to speak to Glaswegians.
I grew up living in many different places, all with strong accents that I acquired, sublimated and accentuate naturally in different situations.
My ânormalâ speaking voice is almost accent-less but people can still detect a twang of Scottish brogue. Iâm not effecting any particular sub component for any kind of obfuscatory reasons but Iâd have a few words for anyone who told me I was any less Scottish for it.
Who cares what the others think, if someone is accepted by their community without them protectedly and deliberately lying about themselves?
Would you use the same kind of language you use with your friends as you would in a job interview? Would your rastafarian friend? Would his friends expect him to? Unless you have a much more detailed insight into your exampleâs life, itâs not relevant what we think.
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Thatâs my point; when does performing an identity become identifiable as âprotractedly and deliberately lyingâ? Does it depend upon whether you believe a community will accept you for who you say you are, or believe that they should accept you but possibly or probably wonât? Is the commitment to the performance key? Does my rasta acquaintance lose rasta points if he drops back into a brummie burr when he phones his mum? Would his rasta rights be rescinded if his mum phoned up the newspapers and said âactually, heâs from Walsall - heâs never even been to Jamaica and I donât know what itâs all aboutâ?
I guess my point is the fanfare of âBUT ACTUALLY SHEâS WHITEâ presumes and contains implicitly so many assumptions about her attitude, intent, geneology, and correctness, and so uncritically accepts the account of her parents (who are assumed to not be âperforming whitenessâ - white being the default and therefore not performed) that I think the whole situation stinks.
If she is just a plain old white person who has made the whole thing up for reasons that are unclear, then I think thatâs pretty strange and Iâm concerned that it fits in with a general tendency amongst both oppressors and activists to presume that people are incapable of really sympathising outside of their own experience and in-group - and it is not fitting to do so.
I have a similar experience to yourself, and although I lost my Cumbrian accent upon moving to Derbyshire, I didnât adopt the local accent because I wasnât permitted to âfit inâ at school, so I had no desire to âperformâ being local. As a result I also have little accent although you can tell Iâm Northern from my 'aâs. Since moving to London Iâve noticed my deviances from local neutral more and begun to perform Northern-ness more, although not at first consciously. Itâs weird.
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I swear you have some kind of radar - do you have an alert popup any time I mention the F-word?
Except she was lying, and knew as much, was aware enough to attempt to conceal her identity and also involve others in that concealment. People would probably have been far more accepting of her in totality if she hadnât lied, and attempted to continue to lie in a manner she obviously thought of as destructive to her self image and to that image which she lyingly portrayed.
Itâs ok to lie to a community if you are the journalist infiltrating white, racist, lynching groups of assholes. In a community that you value and that values you? Not so much.
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Iâm not a psychologist, but my mom is. When I made a joke about this woman, she said âMy spidey-sense is that she needs some help, and I donât think we should be making fun of her.â My mom has 40 years of public mental health experience, so Iâm going with that. The case certainly opens up some interesting areas for discussion about what it means to be part of a group, but I do think we should not be ridiculing someone who may be quite confused herself.
This is not meant to be a scolding post (my first reaction was to make fun of her too), but a suggestion.
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Well, I posted about meat pies well before I saw your comment, so, no.
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No, I think thatâs entirely possible and fair. I have to say our culture seems to have a habit of mocking people in general. I guess I meant this as not necessarily making fun of her, but figuring out whatâs going on with her and what, if anything, this can tell us about our discussion on race in america.
I didnât think it came off as making fun of her, but if it did, thatâs certainly not what I meant or intended at all.
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This is part of my problem - that she said " donât blow my cover" to her brother. And that she seemed to have presented herself as white before.
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Maybe the title of this thread isnât great?
Did you read the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar article yet?
There was another interesting article @thaumatechnicia linked to in the comments, too.
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I think thatâs absolutely fair, in general. But most people donât work that way⌠most people make assumptions, right or not. I think we know that to be true. People in positions of privilege and power especially make assumptions. And thatâs where things kind of break down for the âaskâ mode of operating. I think that works on a person to person level, but given our societies issues with race (and gender), certain people have less power to define themselves to people in authority, which as we have seen in the past few years regarding the killing of black men, can have horrific consequences. Her ability to shift from a white to a black identity has been undergirded by social ideas about race, and by her own whiteness, Iâd argue.
She says she identifies as black, and maybe we should believe her. However, sheâs done something that a person with dark skin wouldnât be able to do. Hence, sheâs taking advantage of white privilege to pass as black. if this were a case of cultures that are equally apportioned socially, that would be one thing, but given the history of racism in America, itâs not.
This isnât African culture, itâs African American culture, though. Itâs a specific set of experiences based on a certain historical experience of slavery and brutal segregation, and the impact of that today. African American culture was informed by brutality of a racist system. I think the notion is a construct is right on, but that doesnât mean that all aspects have that construct have been negative for the people who suffered historically from that construct.
Plus, I think that she assumes (from what I see anyway), that race is only a matter of personal choice, but itâs really not. She can become white at any moment, presumably. Meaning she can leave behind all the baggage of racism and slip back into white privilege. Iâm not sure sheâd do that, especiallly since much of her construction is pinned to her children and her relationship to them.
So, if race is a construct, and people who have been categorized as black, and suffered from that, in turn crafting a culture that helps support and insulate them from white supremacy, itâs not surprising that some would look askance at attempts by people categorized as white to benefit from that without experiencing the negatives of being black in America. Of course, as the mother of black children, young black men (even if she identified as white), she can experience part of that. however, she did not need to wear bronzer and weaves to do so. Iâve known plenty of white women who marry black men, and raise black children, and they donât imagine they arenât white, even as they are part of the black community because of their roles as mothers to black children.
Jelani Cobb, who writes of race often, might be helpful here:
This quote stood out to me:
Among African-Americans, there is a particular contempt, rooted in the understanding that black culture was formed in a crucible of degradation, for what Norman Mailer hailed as the âwhite Negro.â Whatever elements of beauty or cool, whatever truth or marketable lies there are that we associate with blackness, they are ultimately the product of a communityâs quest to be recognized as human in a society that is only ambivalently willing to see it as such...... The white Negroes, whose genealogy stretches backward from Azalea through Elvis and Paul Whiteman, share the luxury of being able to slough off blackness the moment it becomes disadvantageous, cumbersome, or dangerous. It is an identity as impermanent as burnt cork, whose profitability rests upon an unspoken suggestion that the surest evidence of white superiority is the capacity to exceed blacks even at being black. The black suspicion of whites thus steeped in black culture wasnât bigotry; it was a cultural tariffâan abiding sense that, if they knew all that came with the category, they would be far less eager to enlist.She passed as black and set about shouldering the inglorious, frustrating parts of that identityâthe parts that allocate
responsibility for what was once called âuplifting the race.â Itâs an aspect of her story that at least ought to give her criticsâblack ones, particularlyâa moment of pause.
the whole article is really good, actually, and argues itâs not so straightforward as choice, as you suggest, or power dynamics, as Iâd suggest.
I donât think identified as black when she went to Howard, though. She identified as white it seems. And sued on the basis of her whiteness, that she shouldnât have been denied help because of her skin color, ignoring Howardâs historical role in the black community.
Yet, if German anarchists marched into Israel, and begin to tear down Jewish identity, we wouldnât be calling them anarchists, would we. We would recognize how problematic for Germans to arrive in israel and tear down Jewish identity, precisely because of the historical relationship between Jews and Germans.
Because American blackness has been built around the notion of social uplift and self-protection from a racist society, we need to tear down whiteness and the fiction itâs built on first. Otherwise, you leave people vulnerable. The only protection against an atomizing society is the community.
He was still considered black due to how it was historically constructed. As such, he was able to use his white privilege to a good end:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_white.html
He chose to share the black experience fully. I suppose you could argue sheâs doing the same, but everything sheâs said thus far seems to be about her, not the community.
So, Iâm not sure where that leaves all this. Complicated, I suppose, like everything involving race in America.
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This, I think, is the heart of it for me. Because how does her community feel about it. Iâm not sure the work she did demanded that she identify as black in order to do it.
[ETA] So I guess my problem is that she lied, rather than coming in and saying âIâm white (and the mother of black children), how can I help?â, she lied and said âIâm myself a black woman.â Her claims that a white woman canât raise a black son seems hollow to me, because plenty of white women do it, with varying degrees of success, you could say. This seems to indicate to me that this is less about the community and more about her.
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Here is the Kareem article for the record:
Also, I canât find @thaumatechnicia link to whatever article youâre talking about⌠
This article.
Mentioned in the comments here:
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I hadnât seen that yet, so thanks!
Also, this conversation is why I love this place so much. I think weâve had a nice, productive discussion, where we donât all agree, and havenât managed to devolve into name calling, etc. Good job, team happy mutants!
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We call them âpizzasâ here, and the authentic ones are âdeep-dishâ.
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Iâm really fascinated by the concept of âtransracialismâ.
I remember when I first learned about Iron Eyes Cody, the famous âcrying Indianâ from the classic 70s ad. I used to have a poster of him as a kid. Turns out he was full-blooded Italian, born in Louisiana. In his 20s, he started living as a Native American, took the name Iron Eyes Cody, and acted in lots of movies as a ânoble Indianâ. He insisted that he was Cherokee, married a Native American, and was thanked by Native Americans for his contributions to their culture. He died with the name Iron Eyes Cody on his tombstone. The man wasnât one tiny bit Native by blood, but he was (and still is) an iconic Native American image.
Iâm as white as they come, with mostly German/UK ancestry. I found out not long ago that one of my ancestors married a full-blooded Shawnee, which gives me enough Native blood to technically be considered a Native American.
Who deserves to be considered more Native American, someone who completely becomes one in image and spirit, or one who can be âNative Americanâ by filling out some paperwork?
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