The Definite Article

I totally agree that the whole concept of race is completely artificial. I feel that the human race covers a continum from darkest dark to fairest fair. Because humans have a need to belong to a group, it follows that there must be other groups to which they don't belong and that others can not belong to our group, which leads to the "Us and Them Syndrome". (See Nathan's previous blog entry.)

As for Black Americans, I think some of their struggling with their labels is that they haven't felt as though they have ever belonged in our society, so keep trying to define what their name should be. Several stories: A black friend (around my age) of mine told me with amazement in his voice that he just found out that Negro means black in Spanish. (Being my aged, he probably grew up with that label. That was the term in favor in my youth.) He was amazed that it didn't mean anything bad. This is instructive. It is not the word itself, but the way it was used that gave it its meaning and made it denigrating. And the way it is heard, too.

Other story: Far Side(?), no the silly comic strip with the penguin and Bill the Cat, before it got stupid. Dilbert aged man (or maybe it was Dilbert) and his mother. This dates from the People of Color PC days. His mother uses some old and out of favor term to refer to a black person. He takes her through the iterations of labels for black people to People of Color, which she takes back to Colored People.

If you look at the names that American Indians (or Native Americans -- you choose) have for themselves, they invariably translate into 'the people'. What name do Blacks, African-Americans, Negros, American decendents of former slaves have for themselves? What name can they claim rather than accept from others?

Because I personalize everything, I can't help but wonder how I think of myself, as well. I remember when others were hyphenating, I thought, what would I be? French-American? Well, I could lay claim to that, but it seems sort of artificial. And Daddy, Heinz 57-American? That is where the European-Americans come in, I guess.

And if Nae stays in Scotland and becomes a Brit Cit. will he become and American-Brit? American-Scot? And within Great Britain how do people of varying backgrounds identify themselves? I think that the Welsh, Irish, Scots often want to be seen as seperate from the English. And that doesn't even begin to touch the ethinic groups that orginate outside of the British Isles.

And yet, racial or ethnic designations can be useful to describe people. I have heard Baha'i, in an extreme effort to be PC and non-offencive, completely omit race when it would have been a really useful criteria in figuring out to whom we were referring.

Okay, okay, you twisted my arm. One more story: A Mexican friend of mine has a lot of indigenous ancestory. (He is heavily Indian.) He was talking about his early experience here. He told us that someone asked him what tribe he was from. He was so offended that someone would ask him that. Here in the States with Red Pride, that is considered a good question, giving one the opportunity to claim one's Native heritage. Poor Juan was so offended by that question. I think most of us were sort of stunned, not realizing that it was such a touchy subject. And I suspect that Juan's answer would have come down to 'the people', which is the whole point -- we are all, ultimately, The People.

I'll be a Great Scot! Ha ha ha!

The cartoon you're talking about was Bloom County and I liked it as well. It changed to Outland and was alright but steadily declined until Berkley Breathed gave it up.

This is so fascinating, isn't it? And it's not something we're about to solve any time soon. This diversity in our humanity is our biggest test, I think, the one thing we can't for some reason get over. And race is even the most visible form of discrimination, more even than sex. At some point people get into forms of discrimination they don't even know they harbor, such as discrimination against overweight people, mentally retarded people or homosexuals, and the issue just seems to get thornier.

You would think that skin-tone racism would disappear in a place where everyone is black, wouldn't you? But some of the most intense discrimination I've ever come across was in Congo where one of my friends said they didn't want to hang out with another friend because "she was so black". "But you're black too!" I protested. "Not as black as her!" she replied.

People are determined to attach labels to each other. I have a friend who is half Indian half Scottish, and looks very exotic. i.e. no one ever knows where she is from. I was with her once when someone came to ask her, at a coffee shope we were hanging out in "what ARE you?" And once someone even bravely enough attempted to guess "Are you eskimo?

I've always struggled and sometime even skirted around the issue of describing Keiko as Asian when telling someone to pick her up at the station, because I felt, "should I really describer her racially?" Sometimes, when a person talks about their spouse or boyfriend or friend or just the person they're talking about and they'll offer without prompting their ethnicity or race, you wonder what extra information this provides, in a way. I used to find myself struggling in college, repeatedly, in this situation.

In the end, I think I agree with Nathan, it's useful to mention if it is vital, like in the train station scenario.

I'm lost for words, I feel like I didn't make any point at all...

Hmm... that would suggest there is a point to make. Some secret insight that one of us has on this issue, and if they just came forward with it, darn it, we'd have this problem solved.

I do think I'm seeing signs of race/ethnicity becoming somewhat obselete. For example, our mother could claim French heritage, but, as she said it's just not something that is important enough in her life. I know Canadian/Germans here in Israel who have spent their entire life here. They don't have Israeli citizenship, but how German or Canadian could they feel? Another thing - there's inconsistency between terms for race: African, we as Americans anyway, say is equivalent to black, but there are 2 inconsistencies here:

1. not all Africans are 'black' (V, do you consider yourself African?)

2. not all 'blacks' are African (check out Southern Asia, etc.)

So we've got race/continents/countries all mixed up together.

I have no idea how my children will identify themselves. "Hi, I'm half-Filipino-mixed-American"? (that is, if we return to the States and raise them there - which is a good possibility, but never a given) And if I get my British citizenship?

Crazy, crazy, crazy. I don't know how much I think this even matters. More and more, we need to look past our nationalism and our past and get to know people on a personal level... and end some of this craziness!

Although I feel that it doesn't matter to me, I do recognize that it matters to others. A lot. So I need to be cognizant of this and shape my behavior to meet it. I'm not sure what this means, but in a way, saying that is doesn't matter to someone to whom it matters very much is a way of devaluing their experience and emotions connected to their experience. That would not be a good thing either. If they have been told that it matters and have their race used against them to put them down or hold them back (I sound like a '60s song), then to devalue that experience sounds very condescending and patronizing.

Nae, do you remember that particular Sunday?!?!!? I thought I was the only one in the family with that kind of a memory. Gosh, it has to almost 20 years old. Okay, maybe only 17.

I do remember it. Steve Austin is the dirty lawyer guy who always wears sunglasses, has a cigarette dangling from his mouth and his shirts are perpetually untucked. Something happens; I think it's young Oliver Wendell Holmes who has an experiment that goes awry, and Steve gets transformed into a gay black man. Or at least a very effeminate black man, with long, conked tresses and a fastidious appearance. His parents are surprisingly understanding, but then, it was a cartoon.

Yes, and I remember this particular Sunday. They're in his living room and he's sitting on the couch and his mother is standing on the side of the couch holding a wooden spoon, because she's been cooking because that's what she does when she's stressed and she's asking him if she should call him a colored person.

And he says, "No..."

And she says, "Negro?"

And he says, "No no no!"

And she says, "African American?"

And he says, "NO! The politically correct term is People of Color, Mom."

And she says, "Oh! Colored people..."

And I can't remember the exact date, but I think 17 years is pretty close. I'd have been 14, which feels right. It must have been cold out, because I read that comic out on the back porch standing on the heater vent where we used to put our shoes to dry. That was when it was still blue and had that weird white ceiling paper that looked like waves, before you put in the second sink and counter.

Okay, well, we put in the counter and sink when Mendon was 2 1/2, so that would have been 17 years ago, so it must have been before that.
Very good memory!

No way?! I was only 6 or 7 when you put in that sink?!

I used to sweep the kitchen and the back porch when the tiles were pink...was I that little when I did that?

Probably. Maman had us doing whatever she could as soon as she could.

Ha ha! Some of my favorite combinations of comments:

"Nathan, could you go and get a pair of scissors from the kitchen?"

followed by:

"While you're up, would you put the kettle on?"

And then, when you bring scissors and a cup of tea to Maman in the living room and one for yourself, she takes a sip of her tea, then chases you out of the living room and says:

"Don't eat in the living room!"

Finally, once you've gotten up and, grumbling, gone back to the dining room:

"While you're up, bring the sugar through..."

What really adds insult to injury is that if you ever have the audacity to ask Maman to get anything while you recline on the couch and read, she says: "What, are your legs broken?"

The thing is that as she's reading this, I'm sure she's laughing! I'm sure of it!

Yup!

I really don't think I ever asked you to bring the sugar through. That isn't quite how I word things. And, I trained you all well enough to bring me my tea with sugar in it! I may have asked for the milk once or twice, but not the sugar.

Totally. We (at least I did) knew that she takes her tea w/ sugar and milk (various amounts, depending on the year).

Nae, "bring the sugar through"? Either you've been reading a lot of early 20th century American plays or Scotland is getting to you.... in a weird way.

Going back and reading Nae's blog after a week or two is worth it. That's about the time his friends start writing ...

Hi Nathan and the rest of Mara's amazing family and extended... I just read this entry out of interest and feel compelled to write something... not about having tea with sugar and milk, but about race and what we call people. I'm a black person from Bermuda, which makes me not African American, and makes for interesting conversations with Americans who begin to say African-American in the interest of political correctness and then realise that they don't know what to call me.
To me the whole PC thing has gone way out of hand. I understand the reasoning behind it, but when you have to beat around the bush to say something without really saying it, and no one really gets what you're saying at the end of it, what's the point? Last week there was a summer school here in Spain and someone was asking me and another person if we'd seen Yvonne. Now, there were 150 people here, and 2 of them are black, me and Yvonne. The guy with me says "who's Yvonne", the girl who asked said "she's from Ecuador, about this tall, with long hair, she was wearing cutoff jeans and a white t-shirt today" he still had no idea who she meant. I said "the other black girl" he said "Oh! why didn't you say that?" I thought the whole episode was hilarious, and I wonder how the conversation would have gone had I not been standing there.
I'm tired of it all, racism, within racism bias based on how light or dark one's skin is (I lived in the Caribbean for 5 years, and it is rampant there, where in some cases over 95% of the population is black!). However, by the same token, I don't want to totally discount my being black. When I my being black is acknowledged, I feel personally (and maybe it's just me) that it takes into account that 100-odd years ago my ancestors were slaves, that it in some small way acknowledges the fact that life is a little bit harder in a lot of little ways for me. It serves to remind me, if not anyone else, that Abdu'l-Baha refers to me as the pupil of the eye. At the moment this doesn't mean a lot, but I would feel less of myself if I were just that "vertically-challenged, lipid-advantaged female person with short hair" at the train station.
Sorry for barging in on your blog! :o)