Gotta do this quick
I'm heading out for the day, but I want to post this sort of addendum to last night's part three of Racism.
Grant at Properwinston saw my link and let me know he has a problem with it:
Mister (or Mrs.) Prometheus 6,
On my blog I've responded to what I believe to be your unfair quotation of
my entry. Let me know what you think. And please, don't bother using the
handle, I can deal with the blade. If you forgot, the link is
properwinston.blogspot.com.
Best,
Grant.
For the record, it's Earl. Prometheus 6 is a brand name. And if I have the handle, you of necessity get the blade; but the knife isn't in use at this point.
Grant
responds here, and I'm going to post the whole thing… it's brief… for reasons that will be obvious from the final paragraph:
Friends,
A blogger dubbing himself (or herself) Prometheus 6 took offense to my sentence: "Both stories reveal, regardless of what the average American of European descent thinks, that a great deal of African-Americans have yet to become 'white people in black skin.' For whatever reason, Mister Prometheus failed to understand my usage of quotation marks. A common assumption among readers of the English language is that quotation marks can note a change in tone. Clearly, when surrounding the "white people in black skin" statement with quotation marks, I intended to make apparent my distaste for such a statement. With any form of communication, however, sometimes a recipient fails to understand the writer's intent. If this is the case, let me clarify why quotation marks stand next to white and skin.
Under the assimilation model, people from non-Teutonic (sarcasm intended) regions of the world are considered "white" people with different exteriors. From this, the original (original European-Americans) and the assimilated peoples of America attempt to mold the new immigrants (or old ones in the case of African-Americans) into "white" Americans, as opposed to allowing the new immigrants to keep their previous cultures, languages, and nationalisms. One's judgment of the assimilation model depends, of course, on one's judgment of America as a whole. A person enamored by everything American would tend to believe that changing other peoples in "Americans" would be a good thing, and vice-versa.
Either way, one should be careful to avoid treating all peoples within America as "white people in X skin." For one, this line of thought limits genuine understanding of non-"white" cultures within America. Like it or not, African-Americans, Latinos (as if such a monolith exists), Jewish-Americans, etc. have different lifestyles. Many government programs fail because they lack the necessary cultural nuances to influence a certain group's actions. Another problem with this line of thought is that in its extreme form it is white-supremacy. White-supremacy because it posits a one-way flow of cultural transmission from "white" to other. While I support the basics of the assimilation model, I also like the idea of other cultures modifying (this implies a preservation of the core American values) the concept "American."
Mister Prometheus 6 proves himself (or herself) to eager to de-contextualize my comment in order to pervert its intended meaning (now is not the time to talk about the death of authorial meaning). If he (or she) intends to hurl any criticisms at me about my "racist" tendencies in his (or her) upcoming essay about my statement, he (or she) should know that the quote comes from an African-American political scientist, Antonio Brown. Is not it sad that one's identity should have anything to do with one's arguments? Let us see if Mister Prometheus responds to my rejoinder.
Curious,
Grant.
The only thing I really feel a need to deal with here is that last paragraph. Far from decontextualizing his post, I gave a link to it and quoted the first paragraph so it could be identified, specifically so that any interested party would be familiar with it in its entirety before any serious comment on it is made. Yes, I do have a problem with the implications of the particular sentance I pointed to as a hint; so does Grant:
Another problem with this line of thought is that in its extreme form it is white-supremacy. White-supremacy because it posits a one-way flow of cultural transmission from "white" to other.
Because my post is considerably longer than Grant's I'll forgive his decontextualization of my statement (though it would have been nice if he gave a link to my post as I gave to his).
I understand the anticipatory defense he puts up here; as I said, racism is a hard conversation to have. I figure his isn't the last such defense I'll see. But it
is anticipatory. And I can't help but point out the irony of complaining about identity impacting the validity of one's arguments immediately after defending oneself against charges of racism by saying the source of a quote is a Black political scientist. Still, as Grant notes, the essay that will refer to his statement doesn't even exist yet. It will exist; and it will
refer to, as opposed to
be about, his statement.
I make this concession to his concern: I will email him when I get around to posting the essay. He can then decide if I'm attacking him, his ideas, the way the ideas are received after being filtered by popular preconceptions, any or all of the above or what.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 6/20/2003 01:50:55 PM |
Posted by P6 at June 20, 2003 01:50 PM
| Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/835
