I am not my grandmother

[sqbr]

EDIT: In this post I am using "white" as shorthand for "people who do not experience race based prejudice". The two are fairly correlated in Australian and American society, which is the two contexts I'm thinking of. But they haven't always been and aren't everywhere (certainly one can be very pale skinned and still experience racism) This post is about people who definitely don't experience racism and never have derailing conversations about people who have and do: the skin colour of the people involved is not the main issue.

Also there is nothing wrong with talking about the experiences of white people in general, either specifically white experiences (being anglo-irish, say) or issues which affect people of all ethnicities (class, gender etc).

One of the things that comes up in any discussion of cultural appropriation is scads of white people talking about how irish dancing has been appropriated etc and how this affects their feelings.

The Current Race Discussion and That Caught-in-the-Middle Feeling is a mixed race person who passes as white talking about how this complicates their reactions since it not the same as being white nor is it the same as being obviously not-white.

And again people bring up the experiences of white-but-have-a-family-history-of-oppression people. A jewish person talks about why she thinks we do this. And I must admit, this is a topic I've pondered myself, so since this is my lj and talking about it here is not derailing anyone's conversation, I will. I'm going to go into a bit of detail since I often get the feeling white people feel like sure, those other white people have (EDIT: ethnically, see caveat below) privileged lives but they have a unique understanding of (EDIT: ethnic) oppression (also I just feel like talking about it. Part of the point of this post is getting it off my chest so I'm not tempted to bring it up elsewhere).

But I think most of us have stories like this in our pasts (if you go back far enough there's always the romans), the point is that non-white people have this stuff in their present.

EDIT: Also stuff like class/gender/sexuality etc is even more irrelevant. It's not that those things don't cause huge important problems and injustices which deserve just as much attention in the right time and place, but they are not the same as race and so shouldn't be brought up as equivalent in a conversation which is about race. Same way as it would be inappropriate for a POC man to come into a conversation about sexism and say "But what about racism?" (this is different from "Let's consider the way sexism and racism interact").


On the one hand, I am definitely white. The only grandparent who isn't totally white is my jewish grandmother. I've never directly suffered as a result of racism based on my appearance or actual ethnicity, people at most wonder why I look "slightly exotic". My experience is definitely not comparable to actual POC.

On the other hand, my maternal grandparents both suffered some pretty nasty racial and cultural prejudice growing up which had a huge effect on their lives. My great-grandma's family left Poland to England because of all the jewish pogroms, and the one member who stayed behind was murdered by the nazis. As a result of various issues my grandmother became an atheist, moved to new zealand, and pretty much cut herself off from the jewish community but was still (emotionally) close to her family.

My other great-grandmother was a ukranian immigrant to Canada. When she and her irish-canadian husband died my grandad was left to grow up speaking ukranian with an uncle. The well to do english speaking side were horrified, and packed him off to a catholic orphanage, where he was so horribly treated he was still incredibly messed up about it right up until he got Alzheimer's so bad he forgot it. For understandable reasons he became an atheist, cut himself off from his father's family, and moved to new zealand. When he married my grandmother he was cut off from his (ukranian) inheritance for marrying a jew, and he eventually lost contact with that side of the family too.

As a result of her jewish-irish-ukranian heritage people have trouble picking my mother's ethnicity, and she grew up getting racist taunts for being Maori. She also has a really complicated relationship with her own jewishness, feeling incredibly drawn to it but apart from it, especially since she was first atheist and then christian. (Her brother has converted in a very odd child-of-the-70s way) Growing up with my grandparent's stories she feels a duty to fight prejudice based on religion, culture or ethnicity.

Now my father's family are white-bread anglo-irish-australian, but for various reasons I won't go into I feel closer to my mum's family(*), and thus my maternal grandmother's family, which leaves me with a disproportionately strong identification with jewishness despite not being jewish or really knowing much about it. I also grew up very aware of my eastern european heritage (my grandad went on a very strong ukranian kick, he even made some sadly failed attempts to relearn the language) The fact that my grandparents are communists-turned-socialists, and that this was the 80s so the usual attitude was eastern european=communist=EVIL left me feeling very conflicted about the whole thing and desperate for positive portrayals of eastern europeans, specifically first and second generation immigrants (luckily these weren't that hard to find, ie "To the Manor Born", "Perfect Strangers" and "Alexei Sayle's stuff")

So that's me, and my family. These stories have greatly affected me growing up, and I think are largely responsible for me being so strongly opposed to racism.

But I am still white. The act that ukranians suffered discrimination in Canada in the 1930's doesn't change the fact they don't in Australia now. The fact my mother has people treat her like a POC doesn't mean she is, or that I experience this myself. My experiences are an important part of who I am but they are not the same as actively experiencing racism myself, nor are they very relevant to discussions of it. It's a thing, and worthy of acknowledgement in it's own space, but it is not the same thing.

So. That's my tl;dr piece and I've said it :)

(*)No offense to my dad's family, who are perfectly nice people

Comments

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Well, there are white people who suffer discrimination now. "Hicks" and "bogans". I observe this all the time. Class discrimination is certainly real.

I went off and read the rivka post to which you linked. The phenomenon you describe, and it describes, seems to be a natural outgrowth of the discourse of the POC/unpacking-the-knapsack community, which rests on a whole host of generalisations about both "sides" of the POC experience. The whole community is based on a generalise-specialise convection current beginning with various "manifestos" of how to relate to a POC. That's what happens when a political programme chooses to "keep it real" by commencing with the deliberate abandonment of reality's nuances.

Intersectionality

[big-n-happy.livejournal.com]

Well, there are white people who suffer discrimination now. "Hicks" and "bogans".

White women also face discrimination. Point isn't that no white people ever experience discrimination, more that 'whiteness' (invented over the past few centuries) provides huge advantages. There isn't really a white ethnic group, but white skin does help in joining The Club - employers won't see your skin and instinctively associate it with laziness, violence etc. And yeah, whiteness is heavily tied up with class. (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9zJnuW87TlA).

Re: Intersectionality

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I made that point because of alias_sqbr's remark that "most of us have stories like this in our pasts (if you go back far enough there's always the romans), the point is that non-white people have this stuff in their present".

It's one of many possible examples of real systematic prejudice against certain groups of white people now. Women as well, as you point out. But that's nothing new. I have enjoyed a huge social privilege in my life, one that has guaranteed me a good education and an effortless entrée to a career as a white collar professional. In my country, a person who suffers from systematic disadvantage relative to me is far more likely to be white than to be of any other "race".

Returning to alias_sqbr's post and that of rivka we can observe a dynamic in which white speakers in a community of discussion are inclined away from an exposition of the range of difference within the "white monolith" using reasoning such as (rivka):

"We're used to most stories being about us, in one way or another ... I recognize that it's not easy, and I don't claim to be especially or particularly good at it myself. But given the number of other things that are easier when you're white, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect us to spare the effort."

But really, where I'm from, the differences within whiteness are very germane to discussion about social structure, and I don't see the need to elide them for fear that they will crowd out the airwaves. I'd be more concerned with devaluing discussion by acting as if they didn't exist.

The Tim Wise video to which you linked seems concordant with that point of view, discussing as it does the politically expedient use of interethnic prejudice against systematically disadvantaged whites as a diversionary tactic manipulating that electorate. You can't even begin to combat politics like that without highlighting the illusory character of the white monolith. The ruling class is white, but to be white is not to be a member of the ruling class. And ultimately I believe the more important dialogue is about power and privilege and how they're located, and not about race.

[alias_sqbr]

Oops, I was way too vague in my language. *edits to change to ethnic oppression*

Those white people suffer class discrimination, same way I suffer from gender discrimination (and have suffered class discrimination) but once again, while that is definitely a thing (and a very important thing) it is a different thing. Those oppressions should definitely not be ignored, and they might even have a place in discussions about race (ie the way the two interact) but people do not get to say (and they try) "I am oppressed in X non-racial way thus I do not have any responsibility to consider the ways in which I benefit from being white" etc.

I agree the ideas can be too narrow in these discussions, really what it boils down to is replacing one incredibly faulty set of assumptions about ethnicity and race etc with another, still faulty but much better one. It would be nice if people didn't need these boxes at all, but I've yet to find an effective way of combating oppression that doesn't use them. In my experience if you try to judge every case on it's merits without some sort of framework ones subconscious bias ends up supporting the status quo. It is still important not to let the framework totally obscure the individual human experience though, and I have seen people do this. (As always, every group has it's people who suck, including anti-racists and POC)

People with complicated ethnic identities (specifically those on the boundary of "white and "not white") do get the short end of the stick when it comes to discussions of race from both sides, same as any other group in a liminal state (bisexuals, transsexuals, people who cross class boundaries, immigrants, etc) I have a particular bee in my bonnet about this sort of thing, you may have noticed my rants about transphobia in feminism. But while I try not to perpetuate simplistic attitudes to mixed race people myself and bring these issues up where I think they're appropriate, I tend to feel that on the whole it's a conversation that needs to be had between mixed race people and non-mixed race POC and the best thing I can do is try not to get in the way and where it helps offer my support. And afaict (though I am willing to be corrected, what do I know) the static mixed-race people get from anti-racists and non mixed-race POC etc, while bad and in need of improvement, is still much less hurtful than the way they get treated by regular society.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I just want to see a discussion that goes together with the real social experience. Which is complex. Here's one: what do you think of this (http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20090115gc.html)?

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

That's what happens when a political programme chooses to "keep it real" by commencing with the deliberate abandonment of reality's nuances.

kateorman just linked to a an excrept from a book about how to deal with racism that flat out stated "No person of color can be a racist as long as white people maintain power." Not just nuance, but a whole chunk of huge simmering genuine issues with race, dismissed at a stroke, because it didn't fit the discourse.

The deliberate abandonment of nuance is the perfect phrase for the sort of thing that bugs the hell out of me about this sort of debate. I damn well care about nuance.

[alias_sqbr]

I don't know the context, but I'd assume that's less an abandonment of nuance and more a different definition of racism.

I understand why anti-racists use a different definition of racism from the norm, but if you're going to do that it's very important to make your definition clear, and that doesn't always happen.

I assume they mean "Racism is prejudice by someone who is on the powerful end of the racial hierarchy towards someone on the less powerful one based on race". Such a definition admits that (often quite damaging) race-based prejudice can happen from POC, but it just doesn't call it racism (most of it, however, a result of racism). Also the hierarchy of race is considered on a global level, so regardless of the local situation only white people can be "at the powerful end".

Personally my definition is "Racism is prejudice which supports the underlying power structure's attitude towards race" and POC can be racist, but words mean different things to different people. Also while white people are at the top of the global hierarchy of race so can't really experience racism I think there's plenty of situations where one non-white group has their own local racist attitudes ie majority japanese people towards the indigenous people of Japan.

I do sometimes think these discussions center too much on whiteness and the definition of race created during colonialism: this idea and experience of race is hugely important and covers pretty much everything that comes up in everyday life, but it can be limiting when trying to put things in a historical/global perspective. But like I said to ataxi above: it's flawed, but it's useful, and I've yet to find a better way of looking at things (certainly not one endorsed by POC anti-racist activists who I tend to assume have a better grasp on this stuff than I do)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the type of thing. I had a look at the thrust of your arguments to kateorman and agreed: like you I don't think it's adequate to co-opt a term in common use, for however an admirable reason, and then claim this is a suitable basis for communicating productively with people from the political mainstream, to whom you're not even going to bother explaining how you've altered the meaning of said term.

I think there's a quite natural urge to sit down, define terms, build a framework within which a topic can be explored, and from there proceed to political action. However I don't see the benefit of denying a model is a model.

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would be that hard to turn hicks into a race who aren't really white, when I think about it. I mean, a group of people who largely inherit their social positions from birth, with distinct linguistic mannerisms and idioms (I'm assuming, but I'd be surprised if it was far off the mark), cultural traditions, codes of appearance, social expectations, etc. It gets even worse if you stick social desirability into it, because, of course, there'd be a raft of social rules about marriage and public association. You don't marry a hick, for instance. And you don't associate with them where people can see. And if you're divorcing race from skin colour (which you have to do, really. Or (if I'm more charitable to some ideas) which the discussion on this entry has so far assumed), then I don't really see the problem with assuming that hicks and bogans, at least in some cases, form their own little race dominated by the white hegemony.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

The conversations I've been privy to recently about "hicks and bogans" have reflected the probability that what you describe is already the status quo. That reflected probability is: high.

Certainly marrying, or even dating a bogan would be considered to be seriously distasteful by most people in my social echelon, and might result in one's exclusion from one's erstwhile social group. I don't like what this implies about me, my friends, my family, my society very much.

[flyingblogspot.livejournal.com]

I like hearing other people's family stories, which is almost certainly the genealogy nerd in me coming out. Thank you for sharing yours.

The capacity of several-generations-back happenings to influence my own views and emotional landscape is something that I only started thinking about after some counselling, and then later reading an interesting book called They F*** You Up.

Great point on the distinction between past and present oppression and trauma - while the experiences of my paternal grandparents have had an immense formative influence on my own life (and continue to do so), there's such a difference between carrying the scars of past suffering and experiencing it first-hand.

[alias_sqbr]

there's such a difference between carrying the scars of past suffering and experiencing it first-hand.

Absolutely. But it is important to acknowledge those scars, because they are there.

Where I think a lot of these conversations derail is that one person says "I am in pain because of this particular thing" and someone else says "But I'm in pain too, why is yours more important?" and it gets into a "Whose life sucks more?" contest and none of the problems actually get fixed.

(edited for spelling :))

[theducks.livejournal.com]

"leaves me with a disproportionately strong identification with jewishness despite not being jewish"

It is my understanding that as the female child of a female child of a female jewish person, you technically could be considered Jewish, if you wanted (you could pick up a free citizenship for Israel, wouldn't that be awesome?)

[theducks.livejournal.com]

And I'm sure you've read - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F

[alias_sqbr]

Ye, by that definition I am jewish, as will be my children and my (hypothetical) daughter's children etc. Which does make part of me happy, I have to say (especially the idea that my kids will have the option of converting more easily if they want) And when I encounter antisemitism, or jewish history, or look at Israel etc part of me definitely has a gut reaction of those are my people.

But having stayed at a jewish college (by coincidence, someone else chose it for me based solely on price) and talked to actual jewish people...I am not jewish, and I have only a very vague and distorted idea of what being jewish means. Which I can live with, but my attitude to the whole thing is rather complicated.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Well, there are white people who suffer discrimination now. "Hicks" and "bogans". I observe this all the time. Class discrimination is certainly real.

I went off and read the rivka post to which you linked. The phenomenon you describe, and it describes, seems to be a natural outgrowth of the discourse of the POC/unpacking-the-knapsack community, which rests on a whole host of generalisations about both "sides" of the POC experience. The whole community is based on a generalise-specialise convection current beginning with various "manifestos" of how to relate to a POC. That's what happens when a political programme chooses to "keep it real" by commencing with the deliberate abandonment of reality's nuances.

Intersectionality

[big-n-happy.livejournal.com]

Well, there are white people who suffer discrimination now. "Hicks" and "bogans".

White women also face discrimination. Point isn't that no white people ever experience discrimination, more that 'whiteness' (invented over the past few centuries) provides huge advantages. There isn't really a white ethnic group, but white skin does help in joining The Club - employers won't see your skin and instinctively associate it with laziness, violence etc. And yeah, whiteness is heavily tied up with class. (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9zJnuW87TlA).

[alias_sqbr]

Oops, I was way too vague in my language. *edits to change to ethnic oppression*

Those white people suffer class discrimination, same way I suffer from gender discrimination (and have suffered class discrimination) but once again, while that is definitely a thing (and a very important thing) it is a different thing. Those oppressions should definitely not be ignored, and they might even have a place in discussions about race (ie the way the two interact) but people do not get to say (and they try) "I am oppressed in X non-racial way thus I do not have any responsibility to consider the ways in which I benefit from being white" etc.

I agree the ideas can be too narrow in these discussions, really what it boils down to is replacing one incredibly faulty set of assumptions about ethnicity and race etc with another, still faulty but much better one. It would be nice if people didn't need these boxes at all, but I've yet to find an effective way of combating oppression that doesn't use them. In my experience if you try to judge every case on it's merits without some sort of framework ones subconscious bias ends up supporting the status quo. It is still important not to let the framework totally obscure the individual human experience though, and I have seen people do this. (As always, every group has it's people who suck, including anti-racists and POC)

People with complicated ethnic identities (specifically those on the boundary of "white and "not white") do get the short end of the stick when it comes to discussions of race from both sides, same as any other group in a liminal state (bisexuals, transsexuals, people who cross class boundaries, immigrants, etc) I have a particular bee in my bonnet about this sort of thing, you may have noticed my rants about transphobia in feminism. But while I try not to perpetuate simplistic attitudes to mixed race people myself and bring these issues up where I think they're appropriate, I tend to feel that on the whole it's a conversation that needs to be had between mixed race people and non-mixed race POC and the best thing I can do is try not to get in the way and where it helps offer my support. And afaict (though I am willing to be corrected, what do I know) the static mixed-race people get from anti-racists and non mixed-race POC etc, while bad and in need of improvement, is still much less hurtful than the way they get treated by regular society.

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

That's what happens when a political programme chooses to "keep it real" by commencing with the deliberate abandonment of reality's nuances.

kateorman just linked to a an excrept from a book about how to deal with racism that flat out stated "No person of color can be a racist as long as white people maintain power." Not just nuance, but a whole chunk of huge simmering genuine issues with race, dismissed at a stroke, because it didn't fit the discourse.

The deliberate abandonment of nuance is the perfect phrase for the sort of thing that bugs the hell out of me about this sort of debate. I damn well care about nuance.

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would be that hard to turn hicks into a race who aren't really white, when I think about it. I mean, a group of people who largely inherit their social positions from birth, with distinct linguistic mannerisms and idioms (I'm assuming, but I'd be surprised if it was far off the mark), cultural traditions, codes of appearance, social expectations, etc. It gets even worse if you stick social desirability into it, because, of course, there'd be a raft of social rules about marriage and public association. You don't marry a hick, for instance. And you don't associate with them where people can see. And if you're divorcing race from skin colour (which you have to do, really. Or (if I'm more charitable to some ideas) which the discussion on this entry has so far assumed), then I don't really see the problem with assuming that hicks and bogans, at least in some cases, form their own little race dominated by the white hegemony.

[flyingblogspot.livejournal.com]

I like hearing other people's family stories, which is almost certainly the genealogy nerd in me coming out. Thank you for sharing yours.

The capacity of several-generations-back happenings to influence my own views and emotional landscape is something that I only started thinking about after some counselling, and then later reading an interesting book called They F*** You Up.

Great point on the distinction between past and present oppression and trauma - while the experiences of my paternal grandparents have had an immense formative influence on my own life (and continue to do so), there's such a difference between carrying the scars of past suffering and experiencing it first-hand.

[alias_sqbr]

there's such a difference between carrying the scars of past suffering and experiencing it first-hand.

Absolutely. But it is important to acknowledge those scars, because they are there.

Where I think a lot of these conversations derail is that one person says "I am in pain because of this particular thing" and someone else says "But I'm in pain too, why is yours more important?" and it gets into a "Whose life sucks more?" contest and none of the problems actually get fixed.

(edited for spelling :))

[theducks.livejournal.com]

"leaves me with a disproportionately strong identification with jewishness despite not being jewish"

It is my understanding that as the female child of a female child of a female jewish person, you technically could be considered Jewish, if you wanted (you could pick up a free citizenship for Israel, wouldn't that be awesome?)

[theducks.livejournal.com]

And I'm sure you've read - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F

[alias_sqbr]

Ye, by that definition I am jewish, as will be my children and my (hypothetical) daughter's children etc. Which does make part of me happy, I have to say (especially the idea that my kids will have the option of converting more easily if they want) And when I encounter antisemitism, or jewish history, or look at Israel etc part of me definitely has a gut reaction of those are my people.

But having stayed at a jewish college (by coincidence, someone else chose it for me based solely on price) and talked to actual jewish people...I am not jewish, and I have only a very vague and distorted idea of what being jewish means. Which I can live with, but my attitude to the whole thing is rather complicated.