As I expected, I missed at least one relevant voice in the Identity Blogging roundup posted below. Luis was good enough to point me at Luz Paz' post from yesterday.
There are few brown blogs, race-themed or otherwise. Blogging for me is at least in part about representing my experience as a brown person, bringing that perspective to the conversation with other progressive thinkers. Like it or not, I talk about race issues, because it needs to happen. (For the record, I do like to talk about race-related issues, but I like talking about lots of other stuff, too. No, really.)
Growing up in the 70s, my working-class neighborhood and my family's social circle were very racially mixed. Yet the multi-racial world around me wasn't reflected in popular culture, which instead was depicted in Black and white. Lacking brown role models and popular figures, my friends and I looked to African-American culture. We weren't white, and we embraced what non-white popular culture was presented to us. Over my lifetime, Latino immigration has become a subject of increasing public discussion, but the distinct issues facing Chicanos still get little public play, and our shared popular culture is still colored in Black and white to a large degree. Even in progressive circles, race relations often are discussed in terms of Black-white-immigrant. Certainly, I have yet to see a nuanced understanding of the multi-dimensional and multi-racial nature of today's US become the common assumption and vision shared by progressives.
She's right, of course. We've never seen a nuanced view of race, and we're not going to see one very soon because that would require a nuanced view of our society, and the motivations and rewards it provides. Worse still, it would require we have the ability to
recognize when we are wrong and
release the incorrect view. And most disturbing of all, we would need to want to see things fixed rather than just explained. All that, just to begin to see things correctly.
