That is in fact the core of my argument. I agree with you that race has essentially no genetic basis and is a cultural imposition.
And there are two truths following that: Firstly that there are other cultures on the planet besides America’s- not all of whom share all the same cultural baggage as we do. Second, that culture, unlike genetics, can be acquired and discarded. People move. They get adopted. They change. And the American context is not relevant to 85% of them.
Once again- most of the black people I know aren’t African American. Most are Jamaican, A few are from Guinea and Mali. My church works with refugees from Sudan and Somalia. Several of my coworkers have been from South Africa.
And several of those are adamantly neither black nor white, but colored- which is a very different and distinct term there which reflects their ethnic and cultural identity- but here, we assign them as whichever they pass for.
I understand they’re outliers, but outliers are who we’re talking about. If they share the African American experience, it is by choice and migration. Do they have a say in what race they identify themselves as?
OH yeah, my kid was in after care. It was basically a couple hours after school where kids hung out in the computer room or library or something and played games until parents could pick them up after work.
That’s a lovely idea, but it’s not how racism in the US (where this story actually happened) works: all those people could still be abused shot and/or killed on sight by police.
They could still be denied access to affordable housing and better schools.
They could still be incarcerated at disproportionate rates to their White counterparts.
Racism is established, defined, enabled perpetuated and enforced by racists with power; it does not matter how anyone of any color chooses to define themselves, because systemic racism does not care.
Giving oneself a different label does not negate White supremacy, and delusional people like Dolezal are not fucking helping anything.
Yeah. You can adopt cultures but you can’t adopt social classes. A pleb can’t simply choose to be a patrician, and a patrician who chooses to be a pleb is really only deluding themselves…and unfortunately the concept of race has much less to do with cultures than making it up the white commoners by creating a class below them. It may no longer be official but it is still tragically real.
It’s interesting that you’re presuming to speak for transgender people, African people from outside the U.S. and African Americans. Have you asked any of the above about this issue?
I’m waiting for them to work out a scenario where it’s a talking point about Hunter Biden asking his dad to chase people off the White House lawn asking him to “Release the border caravans! And the murder hornets! And the border caravans that shoot murder hornets out of their mouths!”
Like that one time a kid at school vomited out of his nose, Rachel Dolezal is filed in the mental folder marked “Hopefully a one-off / Do not dwell on”.
Firing teachers (or anyone else) for having an OnlyFans is a worrying trend though. I wouldn’t dream of looking at my friends’ OnlyFans without their consent, and if I happen to see them on a porn site, I treat that like I’d walked in on them changing. Making a colleague’s fan site my business feels beyond the pale. It kina freaks me out that a school can claim this level of sexual ownership over staff, and it doesn’t even cross anyone’s mind that it’s fucked up.
Like, what are these creeps going to do if they realise most of their teachers are walking around having genitals in front of the kids?
She tries very hard to pass as a Black woman and could easily be mistaken for one.
…and that includes being treated like one by cops and others prejudiced against Black people.
Pretending to be a minority helps no one, like you said, plus it carries the risk of becoming the victim of systemic racism. It seems to be like she is playing a long game of FAFO.
I’d like to mention that the term “transracial” is a real thing: it’s used when an adoptee is from a different race than the adoptive parents. In the vast majority of transracial adoption cases, the parents are white and live in a white suburb or rural area. The child is brought up as if they were white, but still have to face all the usual racial prejudices in public situations. Meanwhile, if they ever get a chance to interact with someone from their race or original culture they usually aren’t accepted as authentic. They end up feeling they don’t belong anywhere.
The fact that there are huge issues with transracial adoption shows that it doesn’t matter WHY identity is defined at least partially by race…in real life, no matter what your individual circumstances, everyone around you will assign race to you, which will affect how they interact with you.
I’m not presuming to speak for anyone. I’m the one saying that everyone has the right to speak for themselves, especially if they’re coming from a unique perspective.
This is largely what I’m getting at. It’s hard enough to find a place you belong. If any of those kids ever make a decision to settle down on one side of that fence and say “this is who I actually am”, I don’t think anyone has the right to dispute them.
As our society gets more and more open, global, and mixed, this is going to become more and more relevant.
