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[jonesey]

The Scene makes a great point, and one that I've heard, usually, in the context of professional sports: Selling out.

In the words of a prominant sportswriter, some of the worst enemies African Americans have are their own community members.  An AA person strives, and succeeds, and what happens?  That person is seen as selling out, or not being "black" enough (whatever that means).  Meanwhile, amongst the majority (white) culture, that person is still seen, primarily, as black.  Not as a business person, or an attorney, or a father/mother, etc.  Black first, everything else second. 

It's a situation I cannot identify with myself (I'm not AA) and one that I still fail to understand.  I see this with my AA students; the struggle to be successful in school without loosing friends from the neighborhood.

[anthroid]

Exactly.  Exactly.  Exactly.  It is the American illness to say that someone who has an African (or African American) parent AND an European or European American parent is black, period, when in fact that person is part African and part European American.  Obama is no more "black" than I am, and I am so completely northern European as to shame the Nazis.

Except that he probably grew up with all the $hit and complexes that having darker skin gives you in a country like ours. Did anybody read the interview with Michelle Obama in the New York Times a few weeks ago? When I read it, I cried like a baby. It was the first time I'd read something that was so honest (and not cliched) about what it's like to grow up black in America. I'm not saying it's not hard for anyone else because being human is hard but man... we've still got a long way to go before it's easy.

All available anthropological and genetic evidence shows us that all of us, European, African, Asian, North, Central, and South American, and wherever else on this planet, are African in basis.  We are all African.  So, no, Farm_Boy, you may have light skin for the moment (as do I) but it is largely irrelevant in the large scope of human evolution.  You, and I, and all of us, were generated in Africa as homo sapiens sapiens.  Your skin color (and mine) are merely recent (in an evolutionary time scale) and minor evolutionary adaptations to sunlight.  Our "colors" are not relevant in any behavioral, mental, emotional, or any other way except to point out an adaptation to sunlight.  It is the US and some other odd societies that find skin "color" to have meaning.

Can you point me to one of these countries where skin color is meaningless? Really, I'd like to go there.

I didn't say that people don't think skin color is meaningless.  I am saying that skin color is meaningless from a biological standpoint except as an adaptation to sunlight.  I am saying--as FarmBoy summarized very well--that we are all Africans ultimately as homo sapiens sapiens, and privileging skin color as important is an historical artifact of colonialism that has no biological meaning for behavior, intellect, or emotion.

In terms of places where skin color is less problematic and discussed and understood in a much more nuanced way than the very inaccurate glosses of "black" and "white," I'd look at Brazil, most parts of Africa, many parts of East Asia and South Asia (though India does have some issues, its British colonial heritage is probably to blame for that), and many parts of the Caribbean.

[anchorite]

[/quote]


In terms of places where skin color is less problematic and discussed and understood in a much more nuanced way than the very inaccurate glosses of "black" and "white," I'd look at Brazil, most parts of Africa, many parts of East Asia and South Asia (though India does have some issues, its British colonial heritage is probably to blame for that), and many parts of the Caribbean.
[/quote]

Every place you mentioned above privileges lighter skin over darker skin, in many ways that puts racism in the US to shame.  Skin color in Brazil or Asia is in no way "less problematic" than it is in the US.

[trentsands]

Did anybody read the interview with Michelle Obama in the New York Times a few weeks ago? When I read it, I cried like a baby. It was the first time I'd read something that was so honest (and not cliched) about what it's like to grow up black in America.

Hmm...Whitney Young High School (one of the top public HS's in America)...BA from Princeton, JD from Harvard, and last year she made $991,296, from her salaries (two jobs) and her books.

Yes, it's so very hard to be Michelle Obama. 

You clearly didn't understand the article, then. Do you have any idea what it's like to be a token minority at an institution like Princeton? Believe me, it's very, very hard. I'm not saying she's totally without privilege, but the pedigree says very little about the day to day struggles people have to go through to break through these barriers. Comparatively, for example, no one should claim that it's easy to be a woman in a corporate culture dominated by men, or that a salary mitigates that difficulty. Very, very tough.

I haven't read this article, so forgive me if I miscontrue it, but if it is about how Michelle Obama got on at Princeton, I can't imagine it is the best example of how hard life is for a minority in the United States.  I have a lot of respect for the Obamas and certainly she butted her head against her share (maybe even more than her share) of white privelege and racist assumptions, but to face hardship at an elite institution pales in comparison to the racism endured when one hasn't had just advantages.

Does this negate my ability to be empathetic toward Michelle Obama's particular circumstances?  Certainly not.  Does it prevent me from recognizing injustices, whatever the context?  Certainly Not.  But I probably won't cry about it either.

My problem is the way that people collapse class upon race, or suggest that if a person has money, they don't experience racism. My point is that in some ways, the way you experience racism can be especially brutal because not only are you having to prove yourself to the majority group, but you're also having to prove your dedication to the minority group. This is a double bind--the one Obama speaks about when he mentions being "too black" for some and "not black enough" for others. I'm not one to say one kind of oppression is "harder" than another, but yes, everything I've read about the Obamas suggests to me that they know this double bind all too well. And yes, this is emotionally resonant for those of us who have experienced it, too, but have never really heard people talk about it.

Agreed.

[rubygirl]

One last point I want to -- I do want to make about these e- mails, though. And I think this has an impact on this "New Yorker" cover. You know, this is actually an insult against Muslim-Americans, something that we don't spend a lot of time talking about. And sometimes I've been derelict in pointing that out."

I'm really glad you posted this, because I hadn't heard this comment.  I really respect Obama, and I had been disappointed that he hadn't addressed this.  Thanks!

[anthroid]

(my post)
In terms of places where skin color is less problematic and discussed and understood in a much more nuanced way than the very inaccurate glosses of "black" and "white," I'd look at Brazil, most parts of Africa, many parts of East Asia and South Asia (though India does have some issues, its British colonial heritage is probably to blame for that), and many parts of the Caribbean.

Anchorite's post:
Every place you mentioned above privileges lighter skin over darker skin, in many ways that puts racism in the US to shame.  Skin color in Brazil or Asia is in no way "less problematic" than it is in the US.

Cites for your statements?  I believe Conrad Kottak would disagree with you about Brazil, for instance.  Furthermore, Japan's issues (for instance) are not with skin color but with what they assume to be outgroups who are identical genetically (the Burakumin) or nearly identical genetically (Koreans).  So I'd be interested in where you get your information.  (Really!  Not snarking or challenging or trying to be obnoxious [though of course I could be failing].)

Though you didn't mention Africa, of course we all know about the colonially-created categories of Tutsi and Hutu in Rwanda and Burundi.  Their troubles had nothing to do with skin color at all.

[pandora]

Has anyone interviewed Aaron McGruder about this whole brouhaha? 

[ideagirl]

Cites for your statements?  I believe Conrad Kottak would disagree with you about Brazil, for instance.  Furthermore, Japan's issues (for instance) are not with skin color but with what they assume to be outgroups who are identical genetically (the Burakumin) or nearly identical genetically (Koreans). 

She didn't say Japan, she said Asia. I remember having a brief talk with a Thai woman in a department store: she was shopping with her daughters and looking for sunscreen, which she asked me for help with because I'm so pale, and she was concerned that her daughters were so dark (!). She attributed their darkness to her husband and thought perhaps sunscreen would help keep them as light as possible. She was saying all this right in front of the kids, who were maybe 9 and 10. Anecdotal, yeah, but real.

[fiona]

   
I'm not white??

Well, I guess with that same line of reasoning, I'm not human, either, if you go back far enough on the evolutionary chain.

This cracks me up. I read it last night and woke up still laughing. I don't have enough to do this summer. Also, my New Yorker hasn't arrived yet, so all I can do is theorize.

The Fiona

[contemporary_]

And since I'm already in plenty of trouble here, I'll add some more.

Actually, I'd just like to report some comments I heard this summer when I was visiting a Caribbean country.  More than one person asked me this:

Why do you Americans say that Obama is a black man with a white mother, but no one says he's a white man with a black father?

Is this a rhetorical question? If he looked like Carly Simon, Maya Rudolph, or Rashida Jones, people might say that. Or rather, the question of race wouldn't even come up. But he doesn't, so it does.

I have to wonder where farm boy was, because this sounds very strange to me.  There is enough variety of tone and shade in the islands for most to be able to identify all of those women as having blackness.  In America my father is black, but in Europe he is seen as an islander because he isn't dark.  He isn't an islander, he's a native Californian.

Farm_boy, in the USA the legacy of slavery defined black people as anyone with "one drop" of black blood, which separated the whites from the colors and increased property values(more slaves if you were having sex with yours and were fine with enslaving your kin).

In Brazil, some find gradations of color to be even more sensitive in than in the USA.  Not my field or even discipline, but I did write about Obama and his mixed race identity (in the context of other, much better writers like James McBride--The Color of Water) many years ago.

It's always interesting to find out how I am being labeled when I go to different places.  Race and ethnicity are imposed and assumed as much as, if not more than, self-determined.  Quite fluid and uncertain, in my personal experience. 


*Fight the Power!*

[farm_boy]

I got 7 pages of comments from the thread I started yesterday.

Cool.

If I were still in Academia, would this count as a publication??

Thanks, y'all.


Oh, Contemporary, I got those comments from some smart-alecks near Macondo.

[anthroid]

Cites for your statements?  I believe Conrad Kottak would disagree with you about Brazil, for instance.  Furthermore, Japan's issues (for instance) are not with skin color but with what they assume to be outgroups who are identical genetically (the Burakumin) or nearly identical genetically (Koreans). 

She didn't say Japan, she said Asia. I remember having a brief talk with a Thai woman in a department store: she was shopping with her daughters and looking for sunscreen, which she asked me for help with because I'm so pale, and she was concerned that her daughters were so dark (!). She attributed their darkness to her husband and thought perhaps sunscreen would help keep them as light as possible. She was saying all this right in front of the kids, who were maybe 9 and 10. Anecdotal, yeah, but real.

Oh, my mistake.  I guess Japan isn't part of Asia.

[ideagirl]

Cites for your statements?  I believe Conrad Kottak would disagree with you about Brazil, for instance.  Furthermore, Japan's issues (for instance) are not with skin color but with what they assume to be outgroups who are identical genetically (the Burakumin) or nearly identical genetically (Koreans). 

She didn't say Japan, she said Asia. I remember having a brief talk with a Thai woman in a department store: she was shopping with her daughters and looking for sunscreen, which she asked me for help with because I'm so pale, and she was concerned that her daughters were so dark (!). She attributed their darkness to her husband and thought perhaps sunscreen would help keep them as light as possible. She was saying all this right in front of the kids, who were maybe 9 and 10. Anecdotal, yeah, but real.

Oh, my mistake.  I guess Japan isn't part of Asia.

Please don't say ridiculous things, anthroid, unless you're saying them as a joke. She said "X is the case in Asia" and your response was, "X is not the case in Japan." See the problem there? Your refutation doesn't actually operate as a refutation. Or I should say, it only operates as a refutation if you interpret her statement in an absurd and unreasonable way: if you insist that she meant "X is universally true EVERYWHERE in Asia," then sure, you just refuted her, bravo. But that's obviously not what she meant.

Here's an analogy:
She says "In China, there are pandas."
You "refute" her by saying, "That's not true: XX province of China has no pandas."
I then respond by saying, "she didn't say there were pandas in that province, she just said there were pandas in China. When I was in YY province of China, I saw pandas, which supports her statement."
And then you come back with this devastating rejoinder: "Oh, my mistake. I guess XX province isn't part of China."

That's simply not logical.

[anthroid]

Cites for your statements?  I believe Conrad Kottak would disagree with you about Brazil, for instance.  Furthermore, Japan's issues (for instance) are not with skin color but with what they assume to be outgroups who are identical genetically (the Burakumin) or nearly identical genetically (Koreans). 

She didn't say Japan, she said Asia. I remember having a brief talk with a Thai woman in a department store: she was shopping with her daughters and looking for sunscreen, which she asked me for help with because I'm so pale, and she was concerned that her daughters were so dark (!). She attributed their darkness to her husband and thought perhaps sunscreen would help keep them as light as possible. She was saying all this right in front of the kids, who were maybe 9 and 10. Anecdotal, yeah, but real.

Oh, my mistake.  I guess Japan isn't part of Asia.

Please don't say ridiculous things, anthroid, unless you're saying them as a joke. She said "X is the case in Asia" and your response was, "X is not the case in Japan." See the problem there? Your refutation doesn't actually operate as a refutation. Or I should say, it only operates as a refutation if you interpret her statement in an absurd and unreasonable way: if you insist that she meant "X is universally true EVERYWHERE in Asia," then sure, you just refuted her, bravo. But that's obviously not what she meant.

Here's an analogy:
She says "In China, there are pandas."
You "refute" her by saying, "That's not true: XX province of China has no pandas."
I then respond by saying, "she didn't say there were pandas in that province, she just said there were pandas in China. When I was in YY province of China, I saw pandas, which supports her statement."
And then you come back with this devastating rejoinder: "Oh, my mistake. I guess XX province isn't part of China."

That's simply not logical.

Ideagirl, you are the illogical one.  You use a Thai immigrant in the US (presumably, unless your little anecdote took place in Bangkok) to illustrate "Asia."  I used one example--Japan--for which there are actual ethnographic studies, by the way--to illustrate that not all of "Asia As A Great Big Place" uses skin color as a marker of something.  C'mon.  Talking about Asia as a monolithic place in which "race" is relevant, or not, is just silly.  My post did mark out South Asia as somewhat different given the British colonial experience there.  I used Japan to illustrate the principle that one, rather major part of Asia doesn't worry as much about skin color as other equally unimportant things.  A good part of China doesn't care about skin color but worries more about the epicanthal fold. 

Clue me in, Ideagirl:  what kind of expertise do you actually have on this subject?  Give me some cites, or actual evidence (rather than personal anecdotes), to illustrate that you're right here.

[ideagirl]

Clue me in, Ideagirl:  what kind of expertise do you actually have on this subject?  Give me some cites, or actual evidence (rather than personal anecdotes), to illustrate that you're right here.

Know what? I'm not going to bother--I'll bow out now to avoid the great frustration that would result from getting into a discussion on this with you-- because you've just illustrated exactly my point. You interpreted her original statement in exactly the absurd and unreasonable way I mentioned, and you don't even seem to realize it:

I used one example--Japan--for which there are actual ethnographic studies, by the way--to illustrate that not all of "Asia As A Great Big Place" uses skin color as a marker of something.  C'mon.  Talking about Asia as a monolithic place in which "race" is relevant, or not, is just silly. 

Right, Anthroid, it is silly--which is why I said it was "absurd and unreasonable" to interpret her statement that way. Obviously that's not what she meant; she did not mean every Asian culture uses skin color as a marker. She meant in Asia, there are cultures that use skin color as a marker. Her whole point was that the US is not the only place that happens.

I pointed this out in my last post. I pointed out that it was unreasonable and absurd for you to interpret her statement that way. Now you come back with a post that makes it apparent you didn't even pay attention to--perhaps didn't even read?--what I posted, and you continue to interpret her statement in that ridiculous way that I just now critiqued.. So, I won't be discussing this with you, since you don't engage with anything I say. Bye.