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.

Re: Intersectionality

[big-n-happy.livejournal.com]

And ultimately I believe the more important dialogue is about power and privilege and how they're located, and not about race.

I think race is a part of those power structures. It doesn't exist genetically, it's a social construct which is handy in aiding accumulation by the ruling class. And because of that system, people are now instinctively icked by African features, for example. So instinctive prejudice against non-Europeans is a problem in itself, resulting from European imperialism.

And like it or not, "whiteness" exists. Like the "West" isn't a real geographic description, whiteness doesn't describe a discrete ethnic group with a common history. It describes a loose set of features given preference in modern Western society. Have you read How The Irish Became White? That's as good an explanation as any.

Re: Intersectionality

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I'm not denying the existence of "whiteness" ... far from it. I should revise my final sentence to better reflect my position: "and not about race" becoming "a dialogue in which the notion of race participates without always being the dominant factor".

Re: Intersectionality

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

A friend I spoke to who is a little older and had grown up in the UK spoke about being unable to think of himself as 'white' because he was Irish in England in the 1970s -- and while he may have white skin, the English are masters at picking up nuances of accent, and his name is Pat, so he could conceal his ethnicity only for a few seconds on meeting, and experienced active discrimination. So, while he knows that he is considered 'white' now, his childhood experiences still leave him feeling otherwise.

And there are plenty of other meaningful divisions of whiteness. Being Catholic was a real social divider in Australia and the US as late as the 1950s, and still is in some parts of the UK and Ireland, for example.

Whiteness is a complicated thing. I've recently had the weird experience in Alice Springs were people would often lapse into talking about the 'black' and by contrast 'white' populations of the town (and I've been guilty of it myself), when what they really meant were the Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal parts of town (black Americans were definitely part of the 'white' community, as were, say, hospital staff of south east asian decent etc).

[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]

It is odd how the perspective of the article finds discriminating on behaviour so incredibly difficult as to be unfeasible as a solution, so discrimination on race is therefore justified. It sounds to me so remarkably similar to the justifications I saw of anti-Aboriginal discrimination in Alice Springs this year ('well, some of them behave badly, and threaten the business by upsetting people and leaving cleaning bills, so we have to not allow any of them to stay based on race').

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I found it interesting because I was easily led to the article's final position, that the "no foreigners" policy of these onsen was justified (and I even argued that fairly strongly on Momus' blog entry (http://imomus.livejournal.com/428737.html) linking to the article).

I'm still ambivalent and oscillating.

Whenever I think of the well-reported Japanese propensity to racism I lean away from thinking this ban is justified, and whenever I imagine Russian sailors gatecrashing a pleasant bathhouse I lean back towards supporting it.

And then of course there are the subtleties about how one would implement a house rule that really would just solve the gatecrashing problem without being in-principle racist, which are raised in the article.

I think within the POC/unpacking-the-knapsack framework (need a better term for this) the "answer" would clearly be that this ban is unacceptable. Whilst that degree of moral certainty is pleasant when one can latch onto it, I don't presently feel it myself.

[alias_sqbr]

I don't know enough about Japan to say how accurately it reflects the reality there.

But my gut instinct is similar to strangedave's: discriminating on behaviour so incredibly difficult as to be unfeasible as a solution, so discrimination on race is therefore justified? It's not far from "It's ok to ban black people from this building because as we all know they're dirty and it's easier than banning dirty people".

I do know that it gives a flawed explanation of "positive discrimination". As I understand it , in the US these laws just work to prevent injustice by stopping people from not hiring black people for no reason etc. In Malaysia they're actively prejudiced and deliberately disenfranchise chinese people (to give a very dodgy analogy, they're more like American jews than white people. They may have a bit more money on average, but they're hardly the dominant ethnic group) I had some chinese indonesian friends who had to come to Australia to get any decent education at all thanks to similar legislation there.

Now are the japanese (and malasians) right to make these laws? I don't know, I'd want to read up on it from a less dodgy seeming source. Given that this guy isn't even japanese it sounds like someone using a complicated situation in a culture not their own as "proof" that it's ok to discriminate against people based on country of birth.

There are discussions on these topics, but I think unless the people having the conversation can get into a space where they can communicate about basic simple issues they're not going to be able to approach the more subtle ones. One of the motivations behind me reading up on and talking about racism is to gain a solid understanding of it so I feel able to approach these more complex issues properly (ie without flailing and making an idiot of myself) It's taking a long time because it's a tricky subject.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

(see above for my thoughts thus far on the onsen ban)

It is an incredibly tricky area to discuss, and I more often than not end up feeling like an idiot, not to mention a guilty mouthpiece for all of my privilege.

[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]

Agree with this comment.

I don't want to enter the world of online antiracism to be honest: I see as much evidence in the comment threads you've linked to of people using discourse, position and dogma to acquire and abuse status within their local communities of thought almost as I ever have online, and that evidently includes some of the card-carrying antiracists.

[alias_sqbr]

Yeah, people there suck as much as in any group. I'm sure that once I stop feeling so much like I'm learning new and useful ideas my irritation with the fact that People In Groups Suck will eventually drive me to be less involved. (As has happened with pretty much every group I have ever joined except science fiction fandom, and even then I am Never Going On Committee Again)

[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.

[alias_sqbr]

Really? My ex was arguably bogan and noone really seemed to mind (I mean, they didn't really like him, but I don't think that was why). Though I guess it works as an example of the complicated strata of society: his friends gave him crap for dating a "private school girl" and going to uni, he felt self conscious that he went to ECU after failing to get into UWA like I did (arguably thanks to bad teaching, since he's now doing a Phd) as well as in general being less intellectual and clever than me(*), I felt self conscious around his family for being better off than mine, and we both felt self conscious around the much richer people at uni (though I'd kind of gotten over that after going to PLC)

I think I have enough markers of privilege (thanks to my family's poor-but-not-bogan status) that I avoid a lot of the classism I would otherwise get, but I've certainly noticed and been pissed off at a lot of crap against eg children of single mothers who lived in homeswest houses on government benefits ("Oh but we don't mean you Sophie")

*cough* See, this is why I don't talk about class. I get pissed off and incohrent too quickly :)

(*)Two different things :D

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Your anecdote seems to say "me and my ex weren't from quite the same social class as everyone else and that caused problems", so I'd tend to regard it as supporting my theory.

Although I think some of my social group would make an effort to accept a bogan partner, I suspect there's only a few about whom that hypothesis would hold up when the barbecue conversation turned to Summernats and not the Somerville.

Likewise my family, they're pretty tolerant and open-minded but that doesn't mean they have many friends who can't hold a conversation about books and politics to confirm all their little (and natural) prejudices.

After a few months to alienate myself from Australian society I feel the classism around the place more acutely than ever. It's real and ugly.

[alias_sqbr]

o.O

As someone who grew up in a working-class/bogan area (whether or not my family counts as working class ourselves is a complicated question) this is just...too surreal.

But um..no, not a race. Arguably as prejudiced against as some prejudiced-against ethnic groups, but still not the same thing. Trying to argue why makes me realise I don't have a completely solid definition of "race", but having seen how they both play out and the relationship between the two (ie I have grown up around people of every combination of white/not-white and bogan/not-bogan) I know they're not the same even if I can't put it properly into words.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm starting to be even more convinced in my head that they are. Because bogan isn't really a class thing. At least, not in Australia. There's bogans everywhere in all class levels. And it's definitely not gender related. But to lay out where I think it ties in with race:

1) It's inherited. Sure, you can come from a bogan background and then assimilate the values of the dominant culture, and go on your way, and it may be easier than some more typical racial groups, but you can pass as white too. I'd say there's a definite community of bogans who marry each other and raise little bogans. I get the feeling it's even more pronounced in the US and the UK with "white trash" and the white housing estate groupings respectively
2) They suffer social stigma as a result of their "bogan-ness"
3) They have their own language. (Or, at least, there are distinctly bogan phrases and accents).
4) They have distinct artworks (this is mostly UK though) as well as distinct forms and representations in literature and film.
5) There are internal class differences. A rich bogan drives a brand new v12, and a poor one drives a 1970s Kingswood.
6) There are distinct ways in which it interfaces with gender and sexuality. A gay bogan, for instance, has sex with blokey men.
7) They have distinct social traditions (utes, B&Bs, etc.)
8) The have websites. No, really.

They're not black in that some/most of them don't have dark skin. But skin colour is irrelevant to race discussions really, because "blackness" and "whiteness" are usually just terms that describe power roles, rather than specifying who occupies them (to be "white" for instance isn't really to have white skin, it's to have the right kinds of backgrounds and attitudes). And bogans occupy the right sorts of social positions, with the right kind of power disjunctions and other cultural expectations.

[alias_sqbr]

Will get back to it later, but: was that you leaving the anonymous comment? Thought I'd mention it in case you forgot to log in and since you won't get a comment notification might think I'd forgotten you :)

Anyway, enough answering my email for one day, I have to go out and do some chores!

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

Sorry, yes, that was me