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international blog against racism week
Jul. 19th, 2006 11:52 amSo somebody decided that this was "blog about racism week," or maybe "blog against racism week." See here for further details and a list of posts. I had a kind of cranky "this is a bad week for me to blog about racism, actually," moment, but then I decided to post something anyway.
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coffeeandink has a post about ways to suppress discussion of racism. I think it's supposed to be funny, but I'm not sure. I thought it cut a little close to the bone for humor, but it's worth looking at.
I grew up in one of the most diverse cities in the world; I went to a segregated school from second to fourth grade. I don't know what else to call it when you have a gifted class of 20, all but three of whom are white, and a regular class of thirty, all but two of whom are black. That's what we had. (And I think that getting a second grader into a gifted class is only a little about talent, and a lot about knowing how to play the system, and that one of the legacies of racism is that some people both know how to work the system and believe that it will work for them, and some people don't, and that race has something to do with which group you happen to fall into. It's not the only factor, but it's one of them.)
If you think about it for a moment, that's a funny paragraph.
What happened was this: we moved to the Western Addition. In the early 20th century, the neighborhood (or the part we lived in) was mostly Jewish, then it became mostly Japanese. Then World War II happened and the Japanese were sent to camps, and most of them had to sell their houses quickly and cheaply, so a lot of black people bought in. When we moved in, the neighborhood was already gentrifying a little, which in this case is a polysyllabic way of saying that black people were moving out and white people were moving in. My pediatrician lived on our block until his family was deported; my mother says that when she told him what we payed for the house he put his head down and wept.
There were also some Japanese-American families in the neighborhood, because there were still a lot of Japanese institutions around -- groceries and shops restaurants. Not so many in my school. So it's a little weird that I divided the world into "white" and "black" two paragraphs up (especially so soon after using that "diversity" word), but for the purposes of definition, where I grew up, Japanese-Americans were white. As white as Jews were, anyway, and Jews (in my book) are white. If you're not me, or if you're from rural Wisconsin or wherever, your definition will probably be different. But the point I want to make is this: whiteness is not monolithic. Neither is non-whiteness, or blackness (and if you don't believe that, talk to black people whose parents came from Africa or the Caribbean). And whiteness is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, although it does mean that the police are a lot less likely to pick you up in the first place.
In the USA, a lot of the way we talk about racism is predicated on the history of slavery, and that's about "blackness" and "whiteness" as monolithic and opposed identities. I think that sometimes that's a useful way of looking at things, at least within an American context. But sometimes when we talk about race and racism it's useful to make distinctions between different kinds of whiteness and non-whiteness. It's not like one is legitimate and one isn't. But I've seen a lot of discussions of racism fall apart because one set of people are using one paradigm and another are using the other.
coffeeandink has a post about ways to suppress discussion of racism. I think it's supposed to be funny, but I'm not sure. I thought it cut a little close to the bone for humor, but it's worth looking at.I grew up in one of the most diverse cities in the world; I went to a segregated school from second to fourth grade. I don't know what else to call it when you have a gifted class of 20, all but three of whom are white, and a regular class of thirty, all but two of whom are black. That's what we had. (And I think that getting a second grader into a gifted class is only a little about talent, and a lot about knowing how to play the system, and that one of the legacies of racism is that some people both know how to work the system and believe that it will work for them, and some people don't, and that race has something to do with which group you happen to fall into. It's not the only factor, but it's one of them.)
If you think about it for a moment, that's a funny paragraph.
What happened was this: we moved to the Western Addition. In the early 20th century, the neighborhood (or the part we lived in) was mostly Jewish, then it became mostly Japanese. Then World War II happened and the Japanese were sent to camps, and most of them had to sell their houses quickly and cheaply, so a lot of black people bought in. When we moved in, the neighborhood was already gentrifying a little, which in this case is a polysyllabic way of saying that black people were moving out and white people were moving in. My pediatrician lived on our block until his family was deported; my mother says that when she told him what we payed for the house he put his head down and wept.
There were also some Japanese-American families in the neighborhood, because there were still a lot of Japanese institutions around -- groceries and shops restaurants. Not so many in my school. So it's a little weird that I divided the world into "white" and "black" two paragraphs up (especially so soon after using that "diversity" word), but for the purposes of definition, where I grew up, Japanese-Americans were white. As white as Jews were, anyway, and Jews (in my book) are white. If you're not me, or if you're from rural Wisconsin or wherever, your definition will probably be different. But the point I want to make is this: whiteness is not monolithic. Neither is non-whiteness, or blackness (and if you don't believe that, talk to black people whose parents came from Africa or the Caribbean). And whiteness is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, although it does mean that the police are a lot less likely to pick you up in the first place.
In the USA, a lot of the way we talk about racism is predicated on the history of slavery, and that's about "blackness" and "whiteness" as monolithic and opposed identities. I think that sometimes that's a useful way of looking at things, at least within an American context. But sometimes when we talk about race and racism it's useful to make distinctions between different kinds of whiteness and non-whiteness. It's not like one is legitimate and one isn't. But I've seen a lot of discussions of racism fall apart because one set of people are using one paradigm and another are using the other.
