Everything looks different from the inside and I can appreciate that. And I have no problem with reasonable pride and identification with one's background, whether it be racial, religious, ethnic, linguistic, etc.You just resolved some 30% or more of all the problems you could have with a person.
But I see all those things as secondary to being a person and to being an American, which is a unifying, voluntary (since 1865 or so) construct, and as such has more meaning than simply the way one's genes happened to come together.We know that the social concept "race" has no biological basis. Therefore we know being Black isn't simply about the way one's genes happened together.
There's a book, The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey by Toi Derricotte (<--Click, please-- it's that I'm one degree of seperation from her). A "Quote of note" from the NY Times review:
In ''The Black Notebooks'' a light-skinned black woman, Toi Derricotte, examines in journal form her recurring longings for ''escape from blackness'' -- and her indulgence of those longings during intervals of ''passing'' for white. The book's achievement lies in the telling light it casts on how white skin functions in a multiracial world, what whiteness sees and can't see and why whites harm themselves as well as blacks when they dismiss black claims that white vision is defective.This isn't about meaning so much as practical, day-to-day experience and fulfilling human requirements. You're familiar with Maslow? You realize after the primary need of physical survival comes the need to belong? That it comes prior to self-esteem? And that pursuit of each level requires practical mastery of the prior one?
That belonging is all Black people have looked for from day 1…those that feel absolutely rejected notwithstanding. And we cannot force the mainstream to accept us. Membership is always granted by the members. Ask the German immigrant wave, if you can find them...they've assimilated into unity. Ask the Irish wave, and the Italian wave, and the current Eastern Bloc wave.
Can you honestly say that, to this day, America has made Black people collectively feel at home?
But we have to belong. Second level need.
(is White also captialized?)If you like. I don't believe I've used the term yet. I note you respect my choice so I'll respect yours.
I am curious what the practical ramifications are of your Black partisanship. Do you relate to me differently because I am White because of it?Fair question. I'm assuming you mean on a personal level.
As I see it, it makes no difference. It doesn't take much conversation to pick an initial mental model of a person. I modify that model as I learn about the individual.
However, relativity is a bitch and I could see you concluding I do.
I need to be a bit picky-precise here. People who self-identify as White tend to get assigned one of the models that have never experienced effective prejudice, while people who self-identify as Black tend to get assigned one of the models that has. That experience has repercussions…there are there are experiences I share with people who self-identify as Black that must, with the White models (can I just say that? the self-identity part is implied) must be an equivalent discussion that I do not expect you to understand right away…like this one.
What I do about that depends on other characteristics I've assigned as I've individuated the mental model. If I've assigned the Fuckwad attrribute…
Politically, all it means is I make noise when an issue of interest to Black folks in particular is given short shrift. See, each of our human needs are the same, physical and psychological. Each culture provides for some of those needs by their existance, makes some possible and even likely. Each culture is the material we build our lives from. And since each culture is different, each provides different things and we each as a result need different things. There are things I would offer Black folks because they need it that I would not offer you because you don't.
Make sense?
Posted by P6 at May 10, 2004 09:02 PM
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Comments
Membership is granted by the members...good point! Only (real) White folks got to decide who else was going to be let into the "white club".
And why were those immigrants allowed to be white? Follow P6's link and read The Shaping of Black America! (here's a hint: more warm (white) bodies were needed...)
Frankly, all the talk I hear from white people about the 'balkanization of America' (people wanting to keep their heritage and culture, not wanting to drift into the historical amnesia and lack of identity that is assimilation) can be translated as "please! don't leave us!!" If enough people don't "become white" (like light-enough Latinos and Arabs) and enough formerly non-white, now "white" people (like Southern and Eastern Europeans) decide to leave the club.....uh, oh. The legacy of slavery might have to be dealt with.
Trackback Speechless The combined level of ignorance and arrogance on the subject of racism displayed by Joe Taylor in these exchanges is absolutely astounding. The worrisome part is that Joe is supposed to be a Leftist. The fact that he attacks...
Posted by zagg at May 11, 2004 11:19 AM