The Blogging Dangerously series, Episode #1All right, this has gone on way too bloody long. When even
DMV is blogging about a Xangatrend, you know it's gotten out of hand.
Where did it start? I'm not entirely certain. I think it started with
Why I Will Never Date A White Guy, a post which, while perhaps not racist in itself, had implications that bothered some people. (To be fair, the poster seems to work with and encounter a high percentage of a particularly icky breed of White Guy.) Xangans rallied in her comment box, either to cheer her on or to call her racist. Her thoughts were continued in
Why Can't I Get Along With Straight White Men?, which complained (with justification) about the (deplorable) stereotyping of Asians and Asian women, but then stereotyped another demographic in response. Then another blogger posted
What's Wrong With Being Racist?, a post in which she tries to make the case that her internal prejudices and stereotypes regarding a demographic shouldn't matter to anyone because A) we all have them, and B) she stops having them once she meets an individual from that demographic. In response to this,
What's Wrong With Hating Racists? was posted. And that was
followed by a slew of response posts... And now I'm annoyed enough that I'm going to say something on the subject, despite my better judgment.
My stance on the subject is, "Racial" categories are idiotic, and I'm tired of hearing about them. (You are probably sick of reading about them, so chances are nobody will read this, but whatever.)
Point The First: Racial Categories Are Problematic
or
Shades Of Grey
Who is white? Who is black? Who is Mexican or Korean or Irish? (Gish Jen reference, for those of you who know where to look.) People talk about these categories as though they're clear-cut. They're not.
So many Americans today are of mixed ancestry. German/Irish, Chinese/African, Irish/Chinese, Mexican/Scottish, Jewish/Italian, African/Mexican/Irish/Scottish/English/Russian, Heinz 57. Where does someone fall if they belong to multiple ethnicities?
Time it was, "white" was considered to be a "pure" race and "black" was considered to be a taint. That is, if all your ancestry was European except for one African great-grandfather, you were considered black. This is ridiculous, but it served the racist social mindset of the time (see Mark Twain's novel
Pudd'n'head Wilson for a treatment of the idea). And yet why, in this allegedly "enlightened" age, have such concepts not been thrown out? Why are Halle Berry and Barack Obama considered to be so definitively "black" when they are in fact descended from ancestries of multiple ethnicities?
The fact is that our concepts of "black" "white" "Asian" ect. are problematic, that they are neither clear-cut nor conclusive. There are individual ethnicities and ancestries, but there are no clearly-defined races.
Also: I despise the term "white." There is no "white race." I hate the blanketing of all peoples of European and Northern Asian descent into one lump category--the way that Koreans hate when people think they're Chinese or the way Puertoricenas hate being called Spanish. The fact is, I am not "white." I am half of German ancestry and half of Italian ancestry. I'm proud of both and don't want to see either disappear into this all-encompassing Clorox label. And I'm more than certain that people of other ethnicities don't want to see their individual heritages lost in this bloody stupid use of wide sweeping labels.
Not only that, but the category "white" has not remained static. It changes with the cultural views of the day. Time it was, Italians (especially Sicilians) were considered "black," until they
adopted the customs and mannerisms of the dominant majority in an attempt to garner acceptance. Time it was, the Irish were referred to as
'Negroes turned inside out.' "White" is a purely social construct--it has almost no basis in reality.
So these categories really aren't worth much.
Point the Second: Racial Categories Are Not Uniform
or
People Will Always Surprise You
I hate when people talk about one of these sweeping labels as though all the people under the label are the same, like a faceless army of clones. Even mitigated by words like "most" or "almost all" don't take away the stupidity.
People are people. People like certain things and dislike certain things. People do things a certain way and do not do things a certain way. People have certain experiences and don't have other experiences. It's as simple as that.
Why do we have to try to take peoples likes, actions, and experiences and put them in boxes or labels? Why do we try to say, "Oh, you like that because you're [Race X]" or "Oh, you do that because you're [Race Y]"?
There are Koreans who have never uttered the words "Me love you long time." There are Italians who do not like Parmesian cheese (my dad among them, incidentally). There are Mexicans who are well-paid professionals. There are African-Americans who speak with British accents. There are Straight "White" Men who have never oppressed anyone in their lives. All these stereotypes about all these (problematic) categories fall flat.
So in short, if you're spouting a racial stereotype, you'd better be able to cite statistics. Or better yet, stick to talking about individuals, and stop trying to make sense of the actions of individuals by ascribing them to a vague category. Dislike the individuals, if you must, but don't translate the dislike of individuals to mean dislike of everyone in your individuals' ascribed category.
Point the Third: No Racial Category Has A Monopoly On Oppressionor
No-one Knows What It's Like/To Be Mistreated/To Be Defeated/Behind Blue Eyes
This is the sad result of years of hierarchical racism, in which "White Male" was at the top of the social hierarchy and all the other ethnicities (and the other gender) were strung out beneath. Now, in an allegedly "enlightened" age when the better among us are trying to do away with racism and such ways of thinking, a new hierarchy is arising.
Consider this quote from the movie
10 Things I Hate About You, spoken by English teacher Mr. Morgan after feminist Kat complained about their assigned reading's (Hemingway's) patriarchal attitude, and asked if they could read "Sylvia Platt or Charlotte Bronte or Simone de Beauvoir?"
Mr. Morgan: I know how difficult it must be for you to overcome all those years of upper middle-class suburban oppression. Must be tough. But the next time you storm the PTA crusading for better... lunch meat, or whatever it is you white girls complain about, ask them WHY they can't buy a book written by a black man!
White Rastas: That's right mon!
Mr. Morgan: Don't even get me started on you two!
White Rastas: [
Mumble to themselves]
Mr. Morgan's
disregarding of Kat's viewpoint seems to have nothing to do which whether she's right or not. The implication is that, although she's a woman, she's still "white" and he's "black" and therefore she has no right to complain. (An implicit
ad hominem fallacy, to state that a statement may be rendered inert by the identity of the speaker.)
Silly movie stuff, right? But I see some individuals espousing a similar attitude. The idea that one oppressed category has no right to complain because another oppressed category has had it worse. A reverse pecking order seems to form, to hear people talk: a Food Chain of Oppressed Categories, going from White Man on the bottom to African-Americans and Jewish people at the top (arguing over whether the Holocaust or American Slavery were worse). In this pecking order, if you are speaking to someone from a more-oppressed category than your category, your opinion is apparently invalidated.
But again, these categories are not as clear-cut as they are made out to be. While the trend is that African-Americans are oppressed more than European-Americans, it's possible that a particular individual African-American may have been oppressed less over the course of his life than a particular individual European-American. Stop looking at these things in terms of the category one is assigned: deal with people on an individual basis. Ones opinion should not be invalidated because of no other reason other than the category one (allegedly) belongs to.
I am (supposedly) "white," and I am male, and I am writing about ethnicity. I know some people are going to take umbrage at this. They're going to say that it is my "race" that is responsible for all the oppression over the last three hundred years. They're going to say that it's all my fault, that my people owned slaves and made the Chinese build railroads and make the Mexicans work in sweatshops... They're going to say that I should just shut up, therefore, because my opinions on the matter shouldn't count. But they're not speaking of
me, they're speaking of my category. I never owned a slave or made anyone build a railroad. My ancestors never owned slaves or made anyone build railroads: we've only been here for about a hundred years. My great-grandparents spent a lot of time in sweatshops themselves, as recent Italian immigrants. See what I mean about the insufficiency of categories? Speak to me on an individual basis.
And while I am the first to admit that "white" individuals have oppressed those of other ethnicities brutally... they were not me. I work daily at not being like them.
Individually I have something to say, and it is not invalidated simply because I share a skin color with oppressive individuals, any more than an African-American's view on the Holocaust should be invalidated because he/she shares a skin color with the Hutus of Rwanda.
And in the end, every category has oppressed someone, and every category has been oppressed. Every single racial category. You just have to go further back.
Point the Fourth: Oppressed Racial Categories Should Not Oppress BackorYou Can't Use The Ring To Defeat SauronAnd this is the center of my argument: are we really solving anything regarding racism, or are we just perpetuating it in new forms?
I will be the first to admit that "White" Males have oppressed many and much. But what is the solution?
This is a quote from one of the blog entries I cited above:
To be perfectly honest, SWM [Straight White Males] have the world handed to them on a silver platter so they don't know what it's like fighting an uphill battle of stereotypes and latent and blatant racism/discrimination. Let's not deny that. And in Hollywood, these men tend to run the industry. And on top of that, most of them are douchebags.The author of this quote was upset about Asian women being stereotyped as subservient sexual objects for White Men, and about Asian men being stereotyped as being ugly or weird or silly. All valid, all sadly true. But in response she stereotypes White Men.
You see it in the feminist who, validly upset at patriarchal dominance, then tries to dominate the men in her life. You see it in the African-American who, upset at racial violence committed against African-Americans by whites, in turn commits racial violence against whites. It's the natural, instinctive response. Do back to them what they did to you. Hit the person that hit you. But what does it solve?
Nothing.
In
The Lord of the Rings, the protagonists found themselves in possession of the Dark Lord's weapon. The option was brought up--repeatedly--to use that weapon to defeat the Dark Lord. But the wiser among them recognized that using the weapon of the Dark Lord would make them just like him. Oppression, stereotyping, offensive comments: these are like that.
If we are to consider ourselves against oppression, we must consider ourselves against all oppression against any individual at any time, not just oppression against ourselves.All racism, misogyny, prejudice, ect., needs to end. Not just those against us and our category. All of it.
In Summary:We categorize people into race because it's convenient. We stereotype by race because it's easy to do. If people's blood type was written on their arms but their skin color didn't change with ethnicity, perhaps we'd stereotype by blood type instead. (Oh, those type AB- are thieves, you can't trust them... Type O+s love their watermelon...)
It's that arbitrary, and that senseless.
Deal with people as individuals. Celebrate their ethnic heritages, but don't use them as classifications. Drop the classifications entirely. Let's just let people come to us on their own terms.
It's the only way this is ever going to end.
Comments (264)
Thanks for taking the time to -- in a level-headed manner -- express this as logically as possible.
Nice people come in all races. Rotten people come in all races.
And this was my favorite passage from this post:
"Deal with people as individuals. Celebrate their ethnic heritages, but don't use them as classifications. Drop the classifications entirely. Let's just let people come to us on their own terms."
Outstanding.
Forgive me, but prejudice-- even racism or mysogyny-- is not oppression. Prejudice is how you instinctively react to people of a certain category. Oppression is when you choose to hurt somebody because you can. And it's oppression whether it's based on prejudice or whether it's purely arbitrary.
And categorization ain't never gonna end. Classifications are necessary and useful in a thousand ways. There's a reason that we catalogue books in a library rather than just saying, "deal with each book as an individual! don't put it in a box!" Same with people. Generalizations can be made, and made usefully. Generalizations always break down once you're dealing one-on-one with a unique person, but when you're dealing with groups they generally hold up.
As fuzzy as it is on the boundaries, and as awkward as the categories are, race is real.
It ain't worth getting up in arms about, but all the same it's real. What amuses me to no end is that folks bothered to get all worked up about a xangan saying she wasn't going to date white men anymore. When she herself admits (if I understand you right) that she might well end up dating a decent person once she got to know him even if he happened to be white.
I'm racist, by the way. Against Japanese, Turks, and the French. Get along well enough with specific people of those backgrounds, but find their cultures depraved and deplorable and don't mind saying so. But so what.
We need to recognize our prejudices and be equipped to move beyond them. But we don't need to get rid of our prejudices.
Wow, I must have missed all the racial talk in my absence from Xanga.
I think generalizations are certainly generalizations because of some truth behind them, but it's stupid and snobby to automaticly assume a person will act a certain way because of his belonging to a certain group.
My friend B. is a Jew, and it took me years before I knew that officially. Then it hit me on day, a couple of months ago. He really did fill all the Jewish stereotypes. I told him about my revelation and we both laughed about it. Far from being disgusted and justified in stereotyping, I was actually quite tickled and happy to see that there is some validity in the idea of people having certain traits that come from a common background.
Once my hard-headed professor got annoyed because I told him he was a liberal. He said, "How would you like it if I called you a close-minded Catholic?" To which I laughed, and replied, "I would say you are right. Amen!"
I guess I'm trying to say that while I'm not opposed to seeing certain people depicted a certain way because it is true, I don't think that we should make these depictions so iron-clad as to be unable to embrace individuality and the possibility for variety which makes life on this planet so suspenseful and adventurous.
Excellent. *recommends.*
I'm speaking to you as an individual when I say that this post is very intellgent, insightful, and that I have nothing to add.
I'm a Texan, a southerner, a redhead, a woman, Irish, Dutch, and Cherokee. You want oppression? stereotypes? Pick one. We've all had it at one time or another - some are good, some bad, depends on who ya ask.
Great post.
Again, thank you for your post. It was the best one I have read in a long time on Xanga.
@buddha_gazelle - why are japanese depraved and deplorable?
Nice end to the discussion. Now, we can get back to good ol' fashioned sexism! haha (Okay. It was a cheap joke.)
In all seriousness, I very much enjoyed this. This seems to be the summer for Xanga trends. I have only been on a few years, but this summer everyone seems to be inspired by one another...or perhaps I am just reading more people. Either way...
Think on, and write on, Chris. You inspire me to be smarter. ;)
@ChrisRusso -
I wasn't gonna say nothin'! Not a thingy-dingy.@buddha_gazelle -
btw, collectively held prejudice IS oppression. I've explained it elsewhere, and don't feel like I should do it here. I'll spare our host.