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[anthroid]

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.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out. 

I'm so sorry.  I didn't "see" the sarcasm in your post.  If that's what you were intending, I just didn't get it.  I tend to read people's posts pretty straightforwardly.  I guess *shucks* you're just too dang subtle for this gal!

Look, if your point is to say that you can't gloss an entire continent's stance toward "race," why don't you just say that?  You are, by the way, completely correct.  If you're saying something else, then just say it.  But don't play little games.  Say what you mean.

I mean, if you're still in the room.

:~)

[sad_goat]

Well, I guess we know who have hard opinions about other races now, don't we?

[trentsands]

Here's imput from The Daily Show, i.e. effective satire.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=176628&title=obama-cartoon

[anthroid]

Well, I guess we know who have hard opinions about other races now, don't we?

???  Please explain what you mean.  If you're implying that I have opinions about "other races," you haven't read very deeply.  There is no such thing, biologically, as "race" for humans.  There is no "race" gene.  The concept has tremendous power culturally, but the notion that "race" is somehow a unifying biological concept is just wrong.  Ethnicity is closer to what is meant, and even that is only shakily biological.

[shastymcnasty]

Dr. Swift,

Having just read your latest piece, I must register my complaint.  While I recognize your satirical intent, I'm afraid that others may not.  What if some good folk actually do try to sell their babies for food?  I suggest you repudiate your piece at the soonest instant.

Yours, etc,,
ShastyMcNasty

[shastymcnasty]

Dr. Swift,

I must protest.  While we Irish recognize your good intentions, the English are so prejudiced against us that they may think that we actually _do_ intend to sell our children for food.  Why feed their misperception?  I suggest a retraction.

Yours,
Pasty McNasty

[shastymcnasty]

Dr. Swift,

So what's so ridiculous about selling babies for food?  It's just this type of mainstream, centrist thinking that's kept our people from throwing off the shackles of our oppressors!  I say, by any means necessary!

Sincerely,
Dingle Berry

[conjugate]

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!*

I would like to make a few observations here.  First, while "one drop" was enough to deny citizenship (and count as, I think it was, three-eighths of a person for census purposes), I understand that there were many gradations.  I was surprised, grimly amused, and enlightened when I found out what the word "octaroon" meant.  And when I was on the faculty at an HBCU, I found that African-Americans have quite a few internal distinctions that they mostly don't tell white folks about.  Ask an African-American about the slang meaning of "oreo" when used about another African-American; and ask about skin shades to find out that some African-Americans aren't "black enough" for some others. 

Second observation: in graduate school, a colleague from India went to visit a friend's family in (I think) Georgia.  The police stopped his car and asked him many questions about how a "boy" like him got hold of a car like that.  He was, as you might imagine, floored.  He was also polite and cooperative and eventually persuaded the officer that he was not "black" but Indian, and legally owned the car.

Final observation: I was on the Internet in the early days, many years ago, and took part in an online discussion.  Someone observed that, in fact, the Internet was a wonderful thing, because it meant that we could all discuss matters without knowing race or gender, and we could all be equal.  Except, of course, as many people showed, those *!&#@ AOL'ers.  That bunch of ignorant fools with the "...at AOL.com" addresses shouldn't be, it was clear to see, allowed out with the rest of us decent right-thinking folks.  It was then that I realized that one of the ways our brains try to make sense of the world is by developing prejudices and superstitions (or, as a psychologist might put it, "seeking patterns") so that we are unable to avoid this kind of nastiness.  When I am in a bitter, depressed state, I wonder about the depraved Providence that created a species just barely bright enough to arrogate to itself the status of "midway between the Ape and the Angel," (to paraphrase some author who I can't remember), but not bright enough to be as intelligent as it imagines itself to be, or bright enough to avoid a destiny of shameful, vicious, squalid self-inflicted doom.

But then I play video games and get over myself.  :-)

[jackit]

Most people do not recognize satire.

I thought it was funny as hell.

I laughed, too.

[jackit]

I differ from those who say the cover was not successful.  I think it was a simple, yet brilliantly effective parody of those who say and believe ridiculous things about Barack and wussername.  It also fills the  typical New Yorker reader with a warm feeling of bemused superiority.

Plus, it generated awesome controversy and attention.  It is a classic in political commentary.

(*high fives*)

As for being an insult?  Only for the not-so-quick.

[patchouli]

*  Thank you Trentsands for the link to The Daily Show.  I needed
    that laugh
*  Thank you Shastymcnasty for your letter to Swift.  My students are
    often angry when they come to class after reading Swift's "Proposal."  Many
    are offended.  Some are outraged. 
*  Thank you Farm Boy for starting this thread.  I reminded me to rev up
    the satire section in one of my courses again.

Most people do not recognize satire.

I thought it was funny as hell.

I laughed, too.

[mchap11]

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."   Jonathan Swift

[ideagirl]

I would like to make a few observations here.  First, while "one drop" was enough to deny citizenship (and count as, I think it was, three-eighths of a person for census purposes), I understand that there were many gradations.  I was surprised, grimly amused, and enlightened when I found out what the word "octaroon" meant.  And when I was on the faculty at an HBCU, I found that African-Americans have quite a few internal distinctions that they mostly don't tell white folks about.  Ask an African-American about the slang meaning of "oreo" when used about another African-American; and ask about skin shades to find out that some African-Americans aren't "black enough" for some others. 

It was three-fifths of a person, FYI.

As for internal distinctions, yeah, that surprised me when I found out about it too. The whole "high yellow vs. cinnamon vs. [all the names for different skin shades]"--wow! I mean, I think white people have tended to make those distinctions too--despite the "one drop rule," I do think socially those gradations did make a difference. But it was surprising to me to hear about black people discriminating amongst themselves. I don't know why it was surprising; after all, there was a time (which I remember a bit, and my mother remembers much better) when white people discriminated amongst themselves for the same reasons. Everybody wanted to be blonde and blue-eyed; that was the ideal, and the further you got from it, the more "Italian" or "Spanish" or whatever you looked, the worse.

[carebearstare]

I would like to make a few observations here.  First, while "one drop" was enough to deny citizenship (and count as, I think it was, three-eighths of a person for census purposes), I understand that there were many gradations.  I was surprised, grimly amused, and enlightened when I found out what the word "octaroon" meant.  And when I was on the faculty at an HBCU, I found that African-Americans have quite a few internal distinctions that they mostly don't tell white folks about.  Ask an African-American about the slang meaning of "oreo" when used about another African-American; and ask about skin shades to find out that some African-Americans aren't "black enough" for some others. 

It was three-fifths of a person, FYI.

As for internal distinctions, yeah, that surprised me when I found out about it too. The whole "high yellow vs. cinnamon vs. [all the names for different skin shades]"--wow! I mean, I think white people have tended to make those distinctions too--despite the "one drop rule," I do think socially those gradations did make a difference. But it was surprising to me to hear about black people discriminating amongst themselves. I don't know why it was surprising; after all, there was a time (which I remember a bit, and my mother remembers much better) when white people discriminated amongst themselves for the same reasons. Everybody wanted to be blonde and blue-eyed; that was the ideal, and the further you got from it, the more "Italian" or "Spanish" or whatever you looked, the worse.

Again, this is precisely what I mean when I've said that I'm not sure if America is ready for a black president. I'm the last one to say that black people have some kind of "secret" code of conduct that they don't let the rest of America in on, but I guess this is to say that all minority/ethnic groups have their cultural norms and internal discussions, and many of those don't get broadcast to a wider public or, when they are broadcast, simply slip under the radar. Some of this stuff we recognize--it blends into the mishapen stereotypes (not always bad, but usually blunted) we have of other groups, especially in how those groups interact with whites. But I have been surprised, heartened, and also terrified by the ways in which these less visible elements of black culture have been treated and discussed since they've been aired in relation to the Obamas. Debates in the black church, for instance, or issues about skin tone or manners of speech. It's been wild and unsettling for those of us who have simply gotten used to being unknown in this way.

In some ways, you can read the New Yorker controversy through these terms--not simply about satire vs. non-satire or white vs. black, but hitting upon a whole slew of nuanced relationship between different cultural and classed groups, and exercising itself in a far more complicated way than I think American discourse (in the media, anyway) has been used to. Perhaps at the end of the day this blowup also has something to say about the ways in which many black people feel they have to manage concerns that they might harbor latent militancy just by virtue of their skin color.

[zoelouise]

I wonder why Michelle Obama's hair was depicted as curly in the cartoon, when I have only ever seen her wear it straight?