Today is "Memorial Day," the day on which (some) people in the United States remember and honor their war dead. What few white Americans realize is a bit of whitewashed history -- the first such celebration was initiated and carried out by black people.
Thousands of freed slaves gathered to honor fallen soldiers for the first time at the end of the U.S. Civil War, in 1865. Several American towns have since claimed to be the birthplace of Memorial Day, but they each trace their claims back to a later date, 1866.
Historian David Blight tells the story:
After a long siege, a prolonged bombardment for months from all around the harbor, and numerous fires, the beautiful port city of Charleston, South Carolina, where the war had begun in April, 1861, lay in ruin by the spring of 1865. The city was largely abandoned by white residents by late February. Among the first troops to enter and march up Meeting Street singing liberation songs was the Twenty First U. S. Colored Infantry; their commander accepted the formal surrender of the city.
Thousands of black Charlestonians, most former slaves, remained in the city and conducted a series of commemorations to declare their sense of the meaning of the war. The largest of these events, and unknown until some extraordinary luck in my recent research, took place on May 1, 1865. During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters' horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some twenty-eight black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, "Martyrs of the Race Course."
Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable [sic] parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders' race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy's horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freedpeople. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing "a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before."
At 9 am on May 1, the procession stepped off led by three thousand black schoolchildren carrying arm loads of roses and singing "John Brown's Body." The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses. Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathered in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens' choir sang "We'll Rally around the Flag," the "Star-Spangled Banner," and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. . . .
Following the solemn dedication the crowd dispersed into the infield and did what many of us do on Memorial Day: they enjoyed picnics, listened to speeches, and watched soldiers drill. Among the full brigade of Union infantry participating was the famous 54th Massachusetts and the 34th and 104th U.S. Colored Troops, who performed a special double-columned march around the gravesite. The war was over, and Decoration Day had been founded by African Americans in a ritual of remembrance and consecration. The war, they had boldly announced, had been all about the triumph of their emancipation over a slaveholders' republic, and not about state rights, defense of home, nor merely soldiers' valor and sacrifice.
According to a reminiscence written long after the fact, "several slight disturbances" occurred during the ceremonies on this first Decoration Day, as well as "much harsh talk about the event locally afterward." But a measure of how white Charlestonians suppressed from memory this founding in favor of their own creation of the practice later came fifty-one years afterward, when the president of the Ladies Memorial Association of Charleston received an inquiry about the May 1, 1865 parade. A United Daughters of the Confederacy official from New Orleans wanted to know if it was true that blacks had engaged in such a burial rite. Mrs. S. C. Beckwith responded tersely: "I regret that I was unable to gather any official information in answer to this." In the struggle over memory and meaning in any society, some stories just get lost while others attain mainstream dominance. . . .
Over time several American towns, north and south, claimed to be the birthplace of Memorial Day. But all of them commemorate cemetery decoration events from 1866. Pride of place as the first large scale ritual of Decoration Day, therefore, goes to African Americans in Charleston. By their labor, their words, their songs, and their solemn parade of flowers and marching feet on their former owners' race course, they created for themselves, and for us, the Independence Day of the Second American Revolution. . . .
The rest of David Blight's article appears here.
Blight also describes "Decoration Day" in greater detail in his book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, as well as the name-change to Memorial Day, and the contested and changing meanings of this national remembrance. You can listen to "John Brown's Body," the song sung by thousands of freed slaves on that day, here (that page also explains why it sounds so much like another well-known American tune).
David W. Blight teaches American History at Yale University, where he is the director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He's also the author of the award-winning book A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Narratives of Emancipation.
Showing posts with label white loss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label white loss. Show all posts
Monday, May 31, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
wonder why there's no "white history month"
It's February First, so I can sincerely say -- Happy Black History Month!
I've met a lot of white people who don't ever say that, or if they do, they're not being sincere. Sometimes, I hear white people wonder aloud instead -- or more often, grumble aloud -- "Why do black people get to have their own history month, and white people don't?"
This should be a simple question with a simple answer, but when white people grumble like that, I never seem to have one quick-and-ready response. And then, the responses that I do offer rarely seem to fully address whatever it is that's bothering the grumbler about Black History Month, and about the lack of an annual White History Month.
Sometimes I've replied sarcastically, "Well, it is the shortest month, after all." At other times I've pointed out (paraphrasing Tim Wise), "But white people do have their own history months, lots of them. They just have tricky names, like March, April, May and so on."
If the white grumbler seems more willing to listen, I'll go on to say that I see minority history/heritage months as a way of making up for what's still lacking at all other times in our mainstream cultural, educational, and other societal settings -- that is, a fully integrated and proportionally accurate representation of racial and ethnic minorities. We may be making progress in those terms (and even that's debatable), but we're just not there yet.
These explanations rarely fall on suddenly convinced ears. I can usually tell that something behind those ears is still grumbling, probably something about how "they can do their own separate, special things, and no one calls that racist, but if we want to, then suddenly we're racists. It's reverse racism, a racist double standard!" And so on.
Other forms of this common white complaint about non-white collectivity abound, of course. Here's another example, from a two-minute video that a reader sent me a few weeks ago. This young woman, who identifies herself at YouTube as "futurewhiteoprah," was disturbed enough by the label of a black haircare product to speak out to the world about it:
[UPDATE (2/4/10): As Aiyo notes in a comment below, "The girl removed the video guess she couldn't handle people calling her out on her ignorance cest la vie." The most relevant parts of what futurewhiteoprah said about a black-owned haircare business are transcribed below.]
Here's the most interesting part of futurewhiteoprah's complaint, which she offers after stating that she has no problem with a section in stores labeled "Ethnic Haircare Products":
Well, I'm looking at this little jar, and right here, really little, really hard to see, right there, is a picture of a black lady with black hair, and it says, AMBAI [sic*] member, the Proud Lady, 100% black-owned company, in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm not going to say that Georgia has anything to do with that, because that would be racist.
But how blatantly racist can you be on a bottle of haircare product? "The Proud Lady, a 100% black-owned company." If I made a haircare product, and I said, "The Proud Lady, a 100% white-owned company," I'd be an Aryan, and a supremacist, and a racist, and, I'd be horrible. . . . Do you think that's racist? Cuz I kinda do. It's more racist than "Ethnic Haircare Products." And I'm saying, if I made a haircare product that said "100% white-owned company," I'd be bitched at, a lot. So, let me know what you think.
I find this young white woman's confusion a common one. A lot of white people just don't think it's right or fair that it's widely considered okay for people who aren't white to get together under the name of their race or ethnicity, but it's not considered okay for white people to do that. As with futurewhiteoprah, the main concern of those who complain like this seems to be that they and other white people supposedly can't get together under the banner of whiteness without being labeled "racist"; just why any other groups would want to get together under their own banner is of no concern to them. The grumbling is often less about what "they" do and why they do it, and more about what white people "can't" do.
If such frowning white people would simply ask, "Why? Why do black people and others do some things on their own?" they might stop frowning. A bit of Googling in search of answers might expose them, for instance, to the reasoning of John and Maggie Anderson, an African-American couple in Chicago who just spent an entire year trying to contribute all of their money to black-owned businesses.
As they recently told the Chicago Tribune, that wasn't easy to do, and part of the problem was that they too were faced, "at almost every turn," with "the insistence from some whites that [their] experiment was an exercise in racism." This is a charge that the black-business-supporting Andersons reject:
The Andersons -- he's a financial adviser with degrees from Harvard and Northwestern; she's a business consultant who works from home and has a law degree and MBA from the University of Chicago -- said they came up with the "Empowerment Experiment" to help solve persistent ills surrounding "underserved communities."
They note that African-Americans carry nearly $850 billion in spending power but that very little of that money circulates through those "underserved" communities. Most businesses in those neighborhoods are owned by people of other races who live elsewhere.
Then and now, the Andersons ask critics to look beyond racist implications. In March, they changed the name of their project, originally called the "Ebony Experiment," to "better articulate what's in our heart and what our end game is," Maggie Anderson said.
They contend that robust, black-owned businesses help restore impoverished African-American neighborhoods, which yield less crime, more jobs, less drug abuse, stronger families and better schools.
Indeed, other non-white collective efforts have similarly persuasive -- and decidedly anti-racist -- motives, and results. Again, though, white people who complain about such collectivities rarely seem willing to ask about the reasons for them, so stuck are they on the false idea of a double-standard, and on "not being allowed" to do something that other people are allowed to do.
I've also found that when trying to explain the difference here -- why one form of collectivity is generally okay when the other isn't -- reference to "white supremacy" sometimes helps. Exclusion of non-white people from all-white gatherings smacks of racism because so many examples from the past have been explicitly motivated by just that -- white supremacist desires to separate white people from the supposedly contaminating presence of racial minorities.
On the other hand, such non-white gatherings as history months, black-owned businesses, minority organizations and clubs, and even beauty contests, have often been a response to white supremacy -- a way of reasserting, and even repairing, something about a racial group that white supremacist ideology and practice has long denigrated, and damaged. Throughout the history of the U.S., and of the West more generally, the very concept of whiteness itself has been all about dominance of other people and extraction of their labor and resources. As a result, white people are still the group that's generally on top, which means that there's no corrective reason -- nor a good celebratory one -- for white people to gather together as members of their race.
And one more thing -- unlike racist all-white gatherings (such as that proposed, blockheaded basketball league that's been making the rounds recently), minority racial or ethnic gatherings are rarely exclusive -- from what I've seen, other people are often welcome. Which is not the case, from what I've also seen, when white people get together under the banner of racial whiteness.
So if any white people ever do get a serious effort going to start up a White History Month, I obviously won't be interested in joining them. I would be interested to see, though, if they have any understanding at all of why other racial and ethnic history months and so on exist. Because I'd be willing to be that they don't.
* whitefutureoprah apparently misreads an acronym on the haircare product's jar. AHBAI stands for the American Health and Beauty Aids Institute. As their site explains, "AHBAI is an internationally renowned trade association representing the world's leading Black-owned companies that manufacture ethnic hair care and beauty related products featuring the Proud Lady Symbol. AHBAI members serve Black America by providing jobs and scholarships and by teaching consumers how to recycle their dollars in the Black community."
I've met a lot of white people who don't ever say that, or if they do, they're not being sincere. Sometimes, I hear white people wonder aloud instead -- or more often, grumble aloud -- "Why do black people get to have their own history month, and white people don't?"
This should be a simple question with a simple answer, but when white people grumble like that, I never seem to have one quick-and-ready response. And then, the responses that I do offer rarely seem to fully address whatever it is that's bothering the grumbler about Black History Month, and about the lack of an annual White History Month.
Sometimes I've replied sarcastically, "Well, it is the shortest month, after all." At other times I've pointed out (paraphrasing Tim Wise), "But white people do have their own history months, lots of them. They just have tricky names, like March, April, May and so on."
If the white grumbler seems more willing to listen, I'll go on to say that I see minority history/heritage months as a way of making up for what's still lacking at all other times in our mainstream cultural, educational, and other societal settings -- that is, a fully integrated and proportionally accurate representation of racial and ethnic minorities. We may be making progress in those terms (and even that's debatable), but we're just not there yet.
These explanations rarely fall on suddenly convinced ears. I can usually tell that something behind those ears is still grumbling, probably something about how "they can do their own separate, special things, and no one calls that racist, but if we want to, then suddenly we're racists. It's reverse racism, a racist double standard!" And so on.
Other forms of this common white complaint about non-white collectivity abound, of course. Here's another example, from a two-minute video that a reader sent me a few weeks ago. This young woman, who identifies herself at YouTube as "futurewhiteoprah," was disturbed enough by the label of a black haircare product to speak out to the world about it:
[UPDATE (2/4/10): As Aiyo notes in a comment below, "The girl removed the video guess she couldn't handle people calling her out on her ignorance cest la vie." The most relevant parts of what futurewhiteoprah said about a black-owned haircare business are transcribed below.]
Here's the most interesting part of futurewhiteoprah's complaint, which she offers after stating that she has no problem with a section in stores labeled "Ethnic Haircare Products":
Well, I'm looking at this little jar, and right here, really little, really hard to see, right there, is a picture of a black lady with black hair, and it says, AMBAI [sic*] member, the Proud Lady, 100% black-owned company, in Atlanta, Georgia. I'm not going to say that Georgia has anything to do with that, because that would be racist.
But how blatantly racist can you be on a bottle of haircare product? "The Proud Lady, a 100% black-owned company." If I made a haircare product, and I said, "The Proud Lady, a 100% white-owned company," I'd be an Aryan, and a supremacist, and a racist, and, I'd be horrible. . . . Do you think that's racist? Cuz I kinda do. It's more racist than "Ethnic Haircare Products." And I'm saying, if I made a haircare product that said "100% white-owned company," I'd be bitched at, a lot. So, let me know what you think.
I find this young white woman's confusion a common one. A lot of white people just don't think it's right or fair that it's widely considered okay for people who aren't white to get together under the name of their race or ethnicity, but it's not considered okay for white people to do that. As with futurewhiteoprah, the main concern of those who complain like this seems to be that they and other white people supposedly can't get together under the banner of whiteness without being labeled "racist"; just why any other groups would want to get together under their own banner is of no concern to them. The grumbling is often less about what "they" do and why they do it, and more about what white people "can't" do.
If such frowning white people would simply ask, "Why? Why do black people and others do some things on their own?" they might stop frowning. A bit of Googling in search of answers might expose them, for instance, to the reasoning of John and Maggie Anderson, an African-American couple in Chicago who just spent an entire year trying to contribute all of their money to black-owned businesses.
As they recently told the Chicago Tribune, that wasn't easy to do, and part of the problem was that they too were faced, "at almost every turn," with "the insistence from some whites that [their] experiment was an exercise in racism." This is a charge that the black-business-supporting Andersons reject:
The Andersons -- he's a financial adviser with degrees from Harvard and Northwestern; she's a business consultant who works from home and has a law degree and MBA from the University of Chicago -- said they came up with the "Empowerment Experiment" to help solve persistent ills surrounding "underserved communities."
They note that African-Americans carry nearly $850 billion in spending power but that very little of that money circulates through those "underserved" communities. Most businesses in those neighborhoods are owned by people of other races who live elsewhere.
Then and now, the Andersons ask critics to look beyond racist implications. In March, they changed the name of their project, originally called the "Ebony Experiment," to "better articulate what's in our heart and what our end game is," Maggie Anderson said.
They contend that robust, black-owned businesses help restore impoverished African-American neighborhoods, which yield less crime, more jobs, less drug abuse, stronger families and better schools.
Indeed, other non-white collective efforts have similarly persuasive -- and decidedly anti-racist -- motives, and results. Again, though, white people who complain about such collectivities rarely seem willing to ask about the reasons for them, so stuck are they on the false idea of a double-standard, and on "not being allowed" to do something that other people are allowed to do.
I've also found that when trying to explain the difference here -- why one form of collectivity is generally okay when the other isn't -- reference to "white supremacy" sometimes helps. Exclusion of non-white people from all-white gatherings smacks of racism because so many examples from the past have been explicitly motivated by just that -- white supremacist desires to separate white people from the supposedly contaminating presence of racial minorities.
On the other hand, such non-white gatherings as history months, black-owned businesses, minority organizations and clubs, and even beauty contests, have often been a response to white supremacy -- a way of reasserting, and even repairing, something about a racial group that white supremacist ideology and practice has long denigrated, and damaged. Throughout the history of the U.S., and of the West more generally, the very concept of whiteness itself has been all about dominance of other people and extraction of their labor and resources. As a result, white people are still the group that's generally on top, which means that there's no corrective reason -- nor a good celebratory one -- for white people to gather together as members of their race.
And one more thing -- unlike racist all-white gatherings (such as that proposed, blockheaded basketball league that's been making the rounds recently), minority racial or ethnic gatherings are rarely exclusive -- from what I've seen, other people are often welcome. Which is not the case, from what I've also seen, when white people get together under the banner of racial whiteness.
So if any white people ever do get a serious effort going to start up a White History Month, I obviously won't be interested in joining them. I would be interested to see, though, if they have any understanding at all of why other racial and ethnic history months and so on exist. Because I'd be willing to be that they don't.
* whitefutureoprah apparently misreads an acronym on the haircare product's jar. AHBAI stands for the American Health and Beauty Aids Institute. As their site explains, "AHBAI is an internationally renowned trade association representing the world's leading Black-owned companies that manufacture ethnic hair care and beauty related products featuring the Proud Lady Symbol. AHBAI members serve Black America by providing jobs and scholarships and by teaching consumers how to recycle their dollars in the Black community."
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
ignore those who point out that they live in a rapacious, white supremacist empire
I'm terribly saddened by the death today of one of my intellectual heroes, Howard Zinn. I'm also saddened to realize that as news of his death travels, most Americans probably won't recognize his name. Zinn's masterwork, A People's History of the United States, opened my eyes, not only to the brutal and racist underpinnings of the country that I live in, but also to the fact that the "country" I live in should be more properly recognized as an empire.
A couple of years ago, Metropoltian Books released a graphic version of Zinn's own process of becoming aware of that fact: A People's History of American Empire. I bought it as soon as I heard about it, and appreciated its reminders about how much blood, suffering, and sacrifice "America" has extracted from racialized others, much of it for the sake of people like me. Here's a video, narrated by Viggo Mortensen, that introduces this book's key ideas (I also included this video in an earlier post, about America as an empire).
Thank you, Howard Zinn, for your awesome yet accessible insight, for your tireless activism, and for your inspiring optimism and faith in the power of us -- the people.
A couple of years ago, Metropoltian Books released a graphic version of Zinn's own process of becoming aware of that fact: A People's History of American Empire. I bought it as soon as I heard about it, and appreciated its reminders about how much blood, suffering, and sacrifice "America" has extracted from racialized others, much of it for the sake of people like me. Here's a video, narrated by Viggo Mortensen, that introduces this book's key ideas (I also included this video in an earlier post, about America as an empire).
Thank you, Howard Zinn, for your awesome yet accessible insight, for your tireless activism, and for your inspiring optimism and faith in the power of us -- the people.
Monday, January 18, 2010
mourn the loss of martin luther king, jr., and celebrate his legacy
On April 4, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy broke the news of Martin Luther King's death to a largely African American crowd in Indianapolis, Indiana. It was a campaign stop during Kennedy's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy himself was killed two months later (transcript and another video below).
Ladies and Gentlemen -- I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because. . . I have some -- some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, that's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.
Of course, in so many ways, MLK lives on . . .
Jay Smooth (at Ill Doctrine)
"Ten OTHER Things Martin Luther King Said"
Ladies and Gentlemen -- I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening. Because. . . I have some -- some very sad news for all of you, and I think sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in.
For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.
But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He once wrote:
Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.
So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, that's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke. We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past. And we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people. Thank you very much.
Of course, in so many ways, MLK lives on . . .
"Ten OTHER Things Martin Luther King Said"
Monday, December 21, 2009
wish they were "ethnic"
This is a guest post for swpd by Izumi Bayani, who writes of himself, "I identify as a straight male who is 100% Japanese and 100% White and I am 25% deaf. Izumi is my middle name and Bayani is a word in Tagalog and Persian for 'Heroes of the people' and 'the Word' respectively."
The other day at work, one of my co-workers who identifies as a white woman (and implicitly straight and able) asks me "what are you?" I fend this question off, but eventually I reveal that my father is a white guy who was born and raised in Illinois and my mother was born and raised in Japan. As I fend off more predictable qualifying questions that focus on what makes me different ("yes I can speak it, yes we eat sushi at home sometimes," etc.), questions that consequentially ignore my whiteness, my co-worker finally ends her line of questioning with, "I wish I was ethnic."
This wasn't the first or the last time I've heard someone say this, and I don't think I have ever experienced anyone other than a white person say it. Most people of color don't have any reason to say it.
I remember when I first heard someone wish they were ethnic as a kid, and I was blown away. Based on my experiences, I couldn't understand why anyone who had it so good being normal, blending in, would want to give that away and become singled out, picked on, and labeled an Other.
I think what most white people mean when they say they want to be "ethnic" is that they want culture. In turn, this implies that white people think they don't have culture. So I started to try and identify what white culture is, and it is really, really difficult to even begin. I think that’s because I'm a victim of its invisibility. Although I live in America and see, feel, and experience white culture on a daily basis, I still can't define it. At the same time, I don't feel like I'm included in this culture because I am of mixed race.
This invisibility of culture in America leaves some white people feeling empty. And many conclude that since their family doesn't eat with chopsticks or take their shoes off at the door, it's a boring family. But the fact that they don't specify, "I wish I was Japanese," and instead say "ethnic," tells me that really it's "I wish I was anything but white."
I think what really puts me off when I hear this common white wish is how it's loaded with privilege. White people don't have the first damn clue what people from "other" cultures go through in the United States. They just want the "cool stuff" without recognizing the daily strain of being an Other. Statements such as "I wish I was ethnic" make it painfully obvious how unaware this culture is to the experiences of those who don't fit.
"I wish I was ethnic" makes me feel like I'm at a museum, where people walk by and go, "How cool is that? Can you imagine getting A's in school all the time?" "I wish I was ethnic" has such a voyeuristic feel to it.
In addition, I think it's reflective of white people's relative freedom to define themselves as individuals, to come up with their own identity. When I reveal that I am Japanese (read: Asian), I feel like who I am to other people are the stereotypes associated with it. When I see a Black man on campus, I have to fight off the assumption that he plays football or basketball. When I see a Latina, I fight off the assumption that she's a mother. When I see a white person, I don't think twice, which gives them the opportunity to be who they are, since there aren't any assumptions that I make right off the bat. So really, only white people can say "I wish I was ethnic" and have it make sense.
I was just wondering, am I way off base here? Am I looking too much into this? It'd be great to have some outside input.
The other day at work, one of my co-workers who identifies as a white woman (and implicitly straight and able) asks me "what are you?" I fend this question off, but eventually I reveal that my father is a white guy who was born and raised in Illinois and my mother was born and raised in Japan. As I fend off more predictable qualifying questions that focus on what makes me different ("yes I can speak it, yes we eat sushi at home sometimes," etc.), questions that consequentially ignore my whiteness, my co-worker finally ends her line of questioning with, "I wish I was ethnic."
This wasn't the first or the last time I've heard someone say this, and I don't think I have ever experienced anyone other than a white person say it. Most people of color don't have any reason to say it.
I remember when I first heard someone wish they were ethnic as a kid, and I was blown away. Based on my experiences, I couldn't understand why anyone who had it so good being normal, blending in, would want to give that away and become singled out, picked on, and labeled an Other.
I think what most white people mean when they say they want to be "ethnic" is that they want culture. In turn, this implies that white people think they don't have culture. So I started to try and identify what white culture is, and it is really, really difficult to even begin. I think that’s because I'm a victim of its invisibility. Although I live in America and see, feel, and experience white culture on a daily basis, I still can't define it. At the same time, I don't feel like I'm included in this culture because I am of mixed race.
This invisibility of culture in America leaves some white people feeling empty. And many conclude that since their family doesn't eat with chopsticks or take their shoes off at the door, it's a boring family. But the fact that they don't specify, "I wish I was Japanese," and instead say "ethnic," tells me that really it's "I wish I was anything but white."
I think what really puts me off when I hear this common white wish is how it's loaded with privilege. White people don't have the first damn clue what people from "other" cultures go through in the United States. They just want the "cool stuff" without recognizing the daily strain of being an Other. Statements such as "I wish I was ethnic" make it painfully obvious how unaware this culture is to the experiences of those who don't fit.
"I wish I was ethnic" makes me feel like I'm at a museum, where people walk by and go, "How cool is that? Can you imagine getting A's in school all the time?" "I wish I was ethnic" has such a voyeuristic feel to it.
In addition, I think it's reflective of white people's relative freedom to define themselves as individuals, to come up with their own identity. When I reveal that I am Japanese (read: Asian), I feel like who I am to other people are the stereotypes associated with it. When I see a Black man on campus, I have to fight off the assumption that he plays football or basketball. When I see a Latina, I fight off the assumption that she's a mother. When I see a white person, I don't think twice, which gives them the opportunity to be who they are, since there aren't any assumptions that I make right off the bat. So really, only white people can say "I wish I was ethnic" and have it make sense.
I was just wondering, am I way off base here? Am I looking too much into this? It'd be great to have some outside input.
Friday, November 20, 2009
assume that other white people enjoy making fun of and trash-talking non-white people
This is a guest post for swpd by Victoria, who describes herself as "a south Florida native, a senior majoring in English Education planning to teach in public schools, and a mother of 2."
I used to work in finance/mortgage, and I often heard my white coworkers making jokes about people's credit reports. They assumed the people serving as the butt of their jokes were black . . . unless, of course, their last name indicated the possibility of being Latino. I've also heard random white people tell me they're "not racist -- BUT," only to follow that up with a comment that's definitely racist.
I've noticed in these situations that they expect me to give them the old wink and nod -- "I hear ya, buddy" -- tacitly indicating that we're a part of the same special whiteness clique.
Up until recently (that is, until I put a stop to it), I received regular emails with pictures of POC behaving in stereotypical, supposedly humorous ways, or sometimes the opposite of stereotypical ways, with remarks attached to make sure that everyone knew that a stereotype was NOT being fulfilled here. Again, a kind of white solidarity was always being assumed, as if I would automatically agree with the racism that actually IS there, just because I'm white.
This sort of behavior seems fairly common among white people I have known. I always feel like they're insinuating that I'm like them, that my thoughts and feelings about non-white people are just like theirs. I grew up with white people constantly (I really do mean constantly) noting my differences from them, especially my abundance of non-white friends, which they clearly considered some sort of a rejection of my whiteness. But now it's assumed, by white adults who don't know me well, that I'm like them based on racial appearances. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Oh, white people who tell racist jokes and talk behind the backs of POC, please allow me to spare us both the disappointment!
I, and some other white people, do not think your jokes about POC are funny -- at all. Most of the time we're horrified. Contrary to what you believe, we don't all secretly think POC actually fall into the stereotypes that you think they do. We do not necessarily share some collective consciousness together bound by our whiteness. True, we are all lumped together in the white category, but that doesn't mean that we're all as blissfully oblivious as you are about it.
When you send us those emails, some of us are surprised and sorry to find out that you think that way. We want to tell you how ignorant what you've said is, and many times we do tell you. But deep down we know that it means the end of our friendship no matter what we do. Either you'll hate us for telling you that what you've just said, or forwarded, or laughed along with is racist, or we will simply be unable to bear the knowledge that your bigotry runs that deep.
I used to work in finance/mortgage, and I often heard my white coworkers making jokes about people's credit reports. They assumed the people serving as the butt of their jokes were black . . . unless, of course, their last name indicated the possibility of being Latino. I've also heard random white people tell me they're "not racist -- BUT," only to follow that up with a comment that's definitely racist.
I've noticed in these situations that they expect me to give them the old wink and nod -- "I hear ya, buddy" -- tacitly indicating that we're a part of the same special whiteness clique.
Up until recently (that is, until I put a stop to it), I received regular emails with pictures of POC behaving in stereotypical, supposedly humorous ways, or sometimes the opposite of stereotypical ways, with remarks attached to make sure that everyone knew that a stereotype was NOT being fulfilled here. Again, a kind of white solidarity was always being assumed, as if I would automatically agree with the racism that actually IS there, just because I'm white.
This sort of behavior seems fairly common among white people I have known. I always feel like they're insinuating that I'm like them, that my thoughts and feelings about non-white people are just like theirs. I grew up with white people constantly (I really do mean constantly) noting my differences from them, especially my abundance of non-white friends, which they clearly considered some sort of a rejection of my whiteness. But now it's assumed, by white adults who don't know me well, that I'm like them based on racial appearances. That couldn't be further from the truth.
Oh, white people who tell racist jokes and talk behind the backs of POC, please allow me to spare us both the disappointment!
I, and some other white people, do not think your jokes about POC are funny -- at all. Most of the time we're horrified. Contrary to what you believe, we don't all secretly think POC actually fall into the stereotypes that you think they do. We do not necessarily share some collective consciousness together bound by our whiteness. True, we are all lumped together in the white category, but that doesn't mean that we're all as blissfully oblivious as you are about it.
When you send us those emails, some of us are surprised and sorry to find out that you think that way. We want to tell you how ignorant what you've said is, and many times we do tell you. But deep down we know that it means the end of our friendship no matter what we do. Either you'll hate us for telling you that what you've just said, or forwarded, or laughed along with is racist, or we will simply be unable to bear the knowledge that your bigotry runs that deep.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
get fed up sometimes with their white liberal acquaintances
This is a guest post by Harriet Jacobs, who blogs at Fugitivus. She describes herself as "a mid-twenties white girl living in the Midwest. I work at a non-profit that assists families and deals with a lot of racial politics." Regarding her pseudonym, she writes, "My username is Harriet Jacobs, an homage to the author of an autobiography of a life in and escape from slavery. Harriet Jacobs was a helluva woman. . . . I’m not trying to build up a comparison, even metaphorically. I’m just trying to tell you that Harriet Jacobs is the shit."
This post is part of Harriet's "Daily Dose of Racism Series," which continues here.
A conversation with white, liberal, educated acquaintances took a turn into Conservative Talk Radio Land once the subject of Affirmative Action was breached. All these acquaintances have, in the past, even in the same conversation, complained about the total incompetence of many of their fellow white students, but those complaints never took the extra step of assuming these incompetent students attend school due to unfair advantages conferred upon them by their race.
As soon as race became a factor, all the liberal racism came pouring out, from the disclaimers about how certainly “they” and “those” and “inner city” people have had unfair advantages from the start, how some of them don’t even know how to raise their children, and racism is bad, y’all. I’ve come to consider this the white liberal way of saying “I’m not racist, but,” now that “I’m not racist, but” has become a more identifiably racist phrase. Now it’s “I have a tertiary, surface understanding of and sympathy for the buzzword social issues I generally hypothetically know racism is a part of, but black people sure are stupid.”
I acted out a little. When talking with liberal white racists, the kind who stumble like frightened rabbits over “AfricanAmerican black colored uh personofcolor I mean colorblindcolorblindcolorblind,” but can say quite clearly and without a fear-ridden speech impediment, “Some of these people don’t even know you’re not supposed to hit children,” I like to rephrase things more bluntly. Nine times out of ten, it just makes everybody too uncomfortable to go on. One time out of ten, it triggers a healthier, more honest and genuine discussion, now that the pent-up “is it okay that I say this?” is out of the bag. I said, “Programs like affirmative action are made to make whites feel better about being racist, because look, we threw all this money at the darkies and they’re still stupid drug addicts on welfare. Obviously we can’t do anything to fix these people.”
Unfortunately, this time, neither thing happened. There was just a general nodding of heads and, “Yeah, white racists, they’re bad,” before a segue into, “There’s this not-white kid in my class who is like soooooo dumb and seriously, you’ve got to figure that’s why he’s even there.”
Okay, so this is a racist thing, obviously, but it’s not the point of my post. Neither is affirmative action the point of my post, because I have a sort of complicated opinion about that. My point is, my white acquaintances presumed an awful lot on our shared ethnicity. They presumed that this was a safe social space to express their racist beliefs, and have them reassured as normal (white), rational, and logical (unracist) beliefs. They presumed that I would either agree, not care, or not disagree enough to argue. And they presumed all that because I am white.
That did not feel like a safe social space to me. As I started to disagree, I could feel the undercurrent of uncomfortable hostility begin to grow. When I went quiet, the hostility just grew in me instead. Which is maybe a little like what it’s like to be not-white. I didn’t feel comfortable making what was obviously a passing chit-chat — “Did you hear about the guy who threw his shoes at Bush? Oh, that’s funny. Yeah, the weather’s been bad. No, school’s okay, except black people are stupid. Hey, how’s your mom?” — into a centerpiece of awkward unexamined beliefs that trigger conflicted rage and guilt. That was not the casual evening I envisioned when I went out for a goddamn burger with some folks I knew.
I didn’t feel comfortable doing that because I knew it would have gone a whole lot of nowhere — liberal white racism is oftentimes as bulwark and unassailable as white power racism — and I would have ended up fuming for days, over people whom I have very little emotional investment in. And that also bothered me. These acquaintances are not the most important people in the world to me, not by far. They are nice enough. I was not seeing us becoming closer friends, but I wasn’t set against that happening. Except, now I am. Because that is not a safe social space for me. Because while, if the stars aligned, I may have been happy to put the effort and energy into forming a deeper, friendlier relationship with them, I am not willing to put the effort and energy into explaining to them that racism is bad, and also, by the way, that was some racist bullshit out of your mouth there. I don’t want to explain that any more than I want to explain to somebody that you don’t come into my house and shit on my rug — they’re adults and they should goddamn know.
This is what comes of being the “right” race in a racist society. You are an assumed depository for vile, racist conversations and opinions, and your assumed compatriots operate under the belief that this is not damaging, enraging, difficult, isolating, or painful to hear. I do not feel like an overtly radical person. On the spectrum of anti-racism, I consider myself a tick to the left of moderate. But even that perception is radical, because to get there, I’ve had to move my liberal white friends a whole football field to the right of moderate, into “I’m not racist racist, but I am better, smarter, and more rational than the hypothetical dark masses that exist in my brain” territory. But just by virtue of believing that incompetent black people have the right to be as proportionally represented in higher education as incompetent white people, I am too radical to be friends with most white people I know. Which, being white and only moderately anti-racist, just about everybody in my life are white people I can’t be friends with.
This post is part of Harriet's "Daily Dose of Racism Series," which continues here.
A conversation with white, liberal, educated acquaintances took a turn into Conservative Talk Radio Land once the subject of Affirmative Action was breached. All these acquaintances have, in the past, even in the same conversation, complained about the total incompetence of many of their fellow white students, but those complaints never took the extra step of assuming these incompetent students attend school due to unfair advantages conferred upon them by their race.
As soon as race became a factor, all the liberal racism came pouring out, from the disclaimers about how certainly “they” and “those” and “inner city” people have had unfair advantages from the start, how some of them don’t even know how to raise their children, and racism is bad, y’all. I’ve come to consider this the white liberal way of saying “I’m not racist, but,” now that “I’m not racist, but” has become a more identifiably racist phrase. Now it’s “I have a tertiary, surface understanding of and sympathy for the buzzword social issues I generally hypothetically know racism is a part of, but black people sure are stupid.”
I acted out a little. When talking with liberal white racists, the kind who stumble like frightened rabbits over “AfricanAmerican black colored uh personofcolor I mean colorblindcolorblindcolorblind,” but can say quite clearly and without a fear-ridden speech impediment, “Some of these people don’t even know you’re not supposed to hit children,” I like to rephrase things more bluntly. Nine times out of ten, it just makes everybody too uncomfortable to go on. One time out of ten, it triggers a healthier, more honest and genuine discussion, now that the pent-up “is it okay that I say this?” is out of the bag. I said, “Programs like affirmative action are made to make whites feel better about being racist, because look, we threw all this money at the darkies and they’re still stupid drug addicts on welfare. Obviously we can’t do anything to fix these people.”
Unfortunately, this time, neither thing happened. There was just a general nodding of heads and, “Yeah, white racists, they’re bad,” before a segue into, “There’s this not-white kid in my class who is like soooooo dumb and seriously, you’ve got to figure that’s why he’s even there.”
Okay, so this is a racist thing, obviously, but it’s not the point of my post. Neither is affirmative action the point of my post, because I have a sort of complicated opinion about that. My point is, my white acquaintances presumed an awful lot on our shared ethnicity. They presumed that this was a safe social space to express their racist beliefs, and have them reassured as normal (white), rational, and logical (unracist) beliefs. They presumed that I would either agree, not care, or not disagree enough to argue. And they presumed all that because I am white.
That did not feel like a safe social space to me. As I started to disagree, I could feel the undercurrent of uncomfortable hostility begin to grow. When I went quiet, the hostility just grew in me instead. Which is maybe a little like what it’s like to be not-white. I didn’t feel comfortable making what was obviously a passing chit-chat — “Did you hear about the guy who threw his shoes at Bush? Oh, that’s funny. Yeah, the weather’s been bad. No, school’s okay, except black people are stupid. Hey, how’s your mom?” — into a centerpiece of awkward unexamined beliefs that trigger conflicted rage and guilt. That was not the casual evening I envisioned when I went out for a goddamn burger with some folks I knew.
I didn’t feel comfortable doing that because I knew it would have gone a whole lot of nowhere — liberal white racism is oftentimes as bulwark and unassailable as white power racism — and I would have ended up fuming for days, over people whom I have very little emotional investment in. And that also bothered me. These acquaintances are not the most important people in the world to me, not by far. They are nice enough. I was not seeing us becoming closer friends, but I wasn’t set against that happening. Except, now I am. Because that is not a safe social space for me. Because while, if the stars aligned, I may have been happy to put the effort and energy into forming a deeper, friendlier relationship with them, I am not willing to put the effort and energy into explaining to them that racism is bad, and also, by the way, that was some racist bullshit out of your mouth there. I don’t want to explain that any more than I want to explain to somebody that you don’t come into my house and shit on my rug — they’re adults and they should goddamn know.
This is what comes of being the “right” race in a racist society. You are an assumed depository for vile, racist conversations and opinions, and your assumed compatriots operate under the belief that this is not damaging, enraging, difficult, isolating, or painful to hear. I do not feel like an overtly radical person. On the spectrum of anti-racism, I consider myself a tick to the left of moderate. But even that perception is radical, because to get there, I’ve had to move my liberal white friends a whole football field to the right of moderate, into “I’m not racist racist, but I am better, smarter, and more rational than the hypothetical dark masses that exist in my brain” territory. But just by virtue of believing that incompetent black people have the right to be as proportionally represented in higher education as incompetent white people, I am too radical to be friends with most white people I know. Which, being white and only moderately anti-racist, just about everybody in my life are white people I can’t be friends with.
Friday, November 6, 2009
fear backlash
Some white Americans fear that as population changes gradually turn them into a minority, members of other races will do bad things to them. Some also fear a numerical decline and even erasure of the "white race."
"Make more babies!" some of them shout at their fellow white people. "Fear the demographic winter!" others shout in a more apocalyptic mode, worried about a supposed global threat to Western (i.e., "white") Civilization, because of declining "white" birth rates.
As for me, that's not the kind of backlash I fear, in part because I don't think the "white race" ever really existed -- racial "whiteness" is just a fictional and elastic notion that's been applied to disparate groups of people who happen to appear similar to each other. I also see no evidence supporting common white fears that racial minorities who have suffered from the ongoing reign of white supremacy are going to start collectively hurting and killing white people in order to hasten its demise, and to wreak revenge.
The word "backlash" comes to mind for me instead when I hear about incidents like yesterday's shootings at Fort Hood. Before Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan went on a rampage, he allegedly yelled "Allahu Akbar!" That, and his name, and his attire, and thus his supposedly being "un-American," will surely stoke the racist flames of white-minded reactionaries. So while I grieve for those whom Hasan injured and killed, what I fear is that because of the "profile" that Hasan matches, people who somehow look "Arab" and/or "Muslim" to other Americans are going to get hurt, and maybe killed.
If you're an Arab American and/or a Muslim in America, I'm guessing that you're feeling more tense today. And if you're not an Arab American and/or a Muslim, and if you care about a racist, xenophobic backlash against such people, maybe you can prepare yourself for the possibility that you'll actually see it happen.
The backlash can come in many forms, and it can arise in many situations, even the most mundane. One of those situations happens often enough that it might even have a name now -- "Shopping While Arab." For me, watching staged incidents, as in the following video, can help. Thanks to the makers of this television program, I can better decide beforehand, more clearly and firmly, that I won't be an idle bystander. I won't cower and fade into silent complicity.
In this experiment, 13 people stood up against overt anti-Muslim hatred; 6 stood up in support of such actions; and 22 said and did nothing.
Watch for the two heroic young women near the end of this clip. How nice it is -- how hope-inspiring -- that they're young.
"Make more babies!" some of them shout at their fellow white people. "Fear the demographic winter!" others shout in a more apocalyptic mode, worried about a supposed global threat to Western (i.e., "white") Civilization, because of declining "white" birth rates.
As for me, that's not the kind of backlash I fear, in part because I don't think the "white race" ever really existed -- racial "whiteness" is just a fictional and elastic notion that's been applied to disparate groups of people who happen to appear similar to each other. I also see no evidence supporting common white fears that racial minorities who have suffered from the ongoing reign of white supremacy are going to start collectively hurting and killing white people in order to hasten its demise, and to wreak revenge.
The word "backlash" comes to mind for me instead when I hear about incidents like yesterday's shootings at Fort Hood. Before Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan went on a rampage, he allegedly yelled "Allahu Akbar!" That, and his name, and his attire, and thus his supposedly being "un-American," will surely stoke the racist flames of white-minded reactionaries. So while I grieve for those whom Hasan injured and killed, what I fear is that because of the "profile" that Hasan matches, people who somehow look "Arab" and/or "Muslim" to other Americans are going to get hurt, and maybe killed.
If you're an Arab American and/or a Muslim in America, I'm guessing that you're feeling more tense today. And if you're not an Arab American and/or a Muslim, and if you care about a racist, xenophobic backlash against such people, maybe you can prepare yourself for the possibility that you'll actually see it happen.
The backlash can come in many forms, and it can arise in many situations, even the most mundane. One of those situations happens often enough that it might even have a name now -- "Shopping While Arab." For me, watching staged incidents, as in the following video, can help. Thanks to the makers of this television program, I can better decide beforehand, more clearly and firmly, that I won't be an idle bystander. I won't cower and fade into silent complicity.
In this experiment, 13 people stood up against overt anti-Muslim hatred; 6 stood up in support of such actions; and 22 said and did nothing.
Watch for the two heroic young women near the end of this clip. How nice it is -- how hope-inspiring -- that they're young.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
whiten their names
I have never felt any ethnic connection between the Greeks and me, other than how hairy I am.
Alan Alda = Allphonso D'Abruzzo Jr
Woody Allen = Allen Konigsberg
Jennifer Aniston = Jennifer Joanna Aniston
(her father, John Aniston, was originally Yannis Anastassakis)
Fred Astaire = Frederick Austerlitz
Lauren Bacall = Betty Joan Perske
Anne Bancroft = Anna Maria Louisa Italiano
Pat Benatar = Patricia Mae Andrzejewski
Tony Bennett = Anthony Dominick Benedetto
Jack Benny = Benjamin Kubelsky
Milton Berle = Milton Berlinger
Irving Berlin= Israel Baline
Robert Blake = Michael Gubitosi
Jon Bon Jovi = John Francis Bongiovi
Ernest Borgnine = Ermes Effrom Borgnino
Marlon Brando = Marlon Junior Brandeau
Albert Brooks = Albert Einstein
Mel Brooks = Mel Kaminsky
George Burns = Nathan Birnbaum
Nicolas Cage = Nicolas Coppola
Cyd Charisse = Tula Ellice Finklea
Andrew Dice Clay = Andrew Clay Silverstein
Alice Cooper = Vincent Damon Furnier
David Copperfield = David Seth Kotkin
Elvis Costello = Declan MacManus
Joan Crawford = Lucille Fay LeSueur
David Crosby = David Van Cortlandt
Tom Cruise = Thomas Mapother IV
Tony Curtis = Bernard Schwartz
Doris Day = Doris von Kappelhoff
John Denver = Henry John Deutschendort Jr
Angie Dickinson = Angeline Brown
Kirk Douglas = Issur Danielovitch Demsky
Bob Dylan = Robert Allen Zimmerman
Linda Evans = Linda Evanstad
Sally Field = Sally Mahoney
W.C. Fields = William Claude Dukenfield
John Ford = Sean Aloysius O’Fearna
Great Garbo = Great Lovisa Gustafson
James Garner = James Scott Bumgarner
Kathie Lee Gifford = Kathryn Lee Epstein
Cary Grant = Archibald Alexander Leach
Joel Grey = Joel Katz
Buck Henry = Henry Zuckerman
Barbara Hershey = Barbara Herzstein
Hulk Hogan = Terry Gene Bollea
Judy Holliday = Judith Tuvim
Harry Houdini = Erik Weisz
Rock Hudson = Roy Harold Scherer Jr.
Vanilla Ice = Robert Van Winkle
Jenny Jones = Janina Stranski
Ashley Judd = Ashley Tyler Ciminella
Danny Kaye = David Daniel Kaminski
Larry King = Lawrence Harvey Zeiger
Ben Kingsley = Krishna Banji
Cheryl Ladd = Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor
Michael Landon = Eugene Orowitz
Ralph Lauren = Ralph Lifshitz
Jerry Lewis = Joseph Levitch
Sophia Loren = Sofia Villani Scicolone
Peter Lorre = Laszio Lowenstein
Madonna = Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone
Karl Malden = Mladen Sekulovic
Barry Manilow = Barry Alan Pincus
Dean Martin = Dino Paul Crocetti
Walter Matthau = WalterMatuschanskayasky Matthow
Freddie Mercury = Farookh Bulsara
Lorne Michaels = Lorne Michael Lipowitz
Helen Mirren = Ilynea Lydia Mironoff
Demi Moore = Demetria Guynes
Chuck Norris = Carlos Ray Norris
Jack Palance = Volodymyr Palahniuk
Colonel Tom Parker = Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk
Les Paul = Lester Polfuss
Bernadette Peters = Bernadette lazzara
Emo Philips = Phil Soltane
Iggy Pop = James Newell Osterberg
Natalie Portman = Natalie Hershlag
Stefanie Powers = Stefania Zofya Federkiewicz
Kelly Preston = Kelly Kamalelehua Palzis
Joey Ramone = Jeffry Ross Hyman
Tony Randall = Leonard Rosenberg
Ginger Rogers = Virginia Katherine McMath
Joan Rivers = Joan Alexandra Molinsky
Edward G. Robinson = Emmanuel Goldenberg
Wynona Ryder = Wynona Horowitz
Jane Seymour = Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg
Charlie Sheen = Carlos Estevez
Martin Sheen = Ramón Estévez
(Emilio Estevez = Emilio Estevez)
Gene Simmons = Chaim Witz
Anna Nicole Smith = VIckIe Lynn Hogan
Robert Stack = Robert Modini
Cat Stevens (later, Yusuf Islam) = Stephen Demetre Georgiou
Jon Stewart = Jonathan Leibowitz
Jennifer Tilly = Jennifer Chan
Danny Thomas = Muzyad Yakhoob
Ritchie Valens = Ricardo Valenzuela
Frankie Valli = Francis Castelluccio
Jesse Ventura = James George Janos
Raquel Welch = Raquel Tejada
Nathaniel West = Nathaniel Wallenstein
Gene Wilder = Jerome Silberman
Natalie Wood = Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko
-- Georgios Panayioutous
(a.k.a., George Michael)
Alan Alda = Allphonso D'Abruzzo Jr
Woody Allen = Allen Konigsberg
Jennifer Aniston = Jennifer Joanna Aniston
(her father, John Aniston, was originally Yannis Anastassakis)
Fred Astaire = Frederick Austerlitz
Lauren Bacall = Betty Joan Perske
Anne Bancroft = Anna Maria Louisa Italiano
Pat Benatar = Patricia Mae Andrzejewski
Tony Bennett = Anthony Dominick Benedetto
Jack Benny = Benjamin Kubelsky
Milton Berle = Milton Berlinger
Irving Berlin= Israel Baline
Robert Blake = Michael Gubitosi
Jon Bon Jovi = John Francis Bongiovi
Ernest Borgnine = Ermes Effrom Borgnino
Marlon Brando = Marlon Junior Brandeau
Albert Brooks = Albert Einstein
Mel Brooks = Mel Kaminsky
George Burns = Nathan Birnbaum
Nicolas Cage = Nicolas Coppola
Cyd Charisse = Tula Ellice Finklea
Andrew Dice Clay = Andrew Clay Silverstein
Alice Cooper = Vincent Damon Furnier
David Copperfield = David Seth Kotkin
Elvis Costello = Declan MacManus
Joan Crawford = Lucille Fay LeSueur
David Crosby = David Van Cortlandt
Tom Cruise = Thomas Mapother IV
Tony Curtis = Bernard Schwartz
Doris Day = Doris von Kappelhoff
John Denver = Henry John Deutschendort Jr
Angie Dickinson = Angeline Brown
Kirk Douglas = Issur Danielovitch Demsky
Bob Dylan = Robert Allen Zimmerman
Linda Evans = Linda Evanstad
Sally Field = Sally Mahoney
W.C. Fields = William Claude Dukenfield
John Ford = Sean Aloysius O’Fearna
Great Garbo = Great Lovisa Gustafson
James Garner = James Scott Bumgarner
Kathie Lee Gifford = Kathryn Lee Epstein
Cary Grant = Archibald Alexander Leach
Joel Grey = Joel Katz
Buck Henry = Henry Zuckerman
Barbara Hershey = Barbara Herzstein
Hulk Hogan = Terry Gene Bollea
Judy Holliday = Judith Tuvim
Harry Houdini = Erik Weisz
Rock Hudson = Roy Harold Scherer Jr.
Vanilla Ice = Robert Van Winkle
Jenny Jones = Janina Stranski
Ashley Judd = Ashley Tyler Ciminella
Danny Kaye = David Daniel Kaminski
Larry King = Lawrence Harvey Zeiger
Ben Kingsley = Krishna Banji
Cheryl Ladd = Cheryl Jean Stoppelmoor
Michael Landon = Eugene Orowitz
Ralph Lauren = Ralph Lifshitz
Jerry Lewis = Joseph Levitch
Sophia Loren = Sofia Villani Scicolone
Peter Lorre = Laszio Lowenstein
Madonna = Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone
Karl Malden = Mladen Sekulovic
Barry Manilow = Barry Alan Pincus
Dean Martin = Dino Paul Crocetti
Walter Matthau = Walter
Freddie Mercury = Farookh Bulsara
Lorne Michaels = Lorne Michael Lipowitz
Helen Mirren = Ilynea Lydia Mironoff
Demi Moore = Demetria Guynes
Chuck Norris = Carlos Ray Norris
Jack Palance = Volodymyr Palahniuk
Colonel Tom Parker = Andreas Cornelius van Kuijk
Les Paul = Lester Polfuss
Bernadette Peters = Bernadette lazzara
Emo Philips = Phil Soltane
Iggy Pop = James Newell Osterberg
Natalie Portman = Natalie Hershlag
Stefanie Powers = Stefania Zofya Federkiewicz
Kelly Preston = Kelly Kamalelehua Palzis
Joey Ramone = Jeffry Ross Hyman
Tony Randall = Leonard Rosenberg
Ginger Rogers = Virginia Katherine McMath
Joan Rivers = Joan Alexandra Molinsky
Edward G. Robinson = Emmanuel Goldenberg
Wynona Ryder = Wynona Horowitz
Jane Seymour = Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg
Charlie Sheen = Carlos Estevez
Martin Sheen = Ramón Estévez
(Emilio Estevez = Emilio Estevez)
Gene Simmons = Chaim Witz
Anna Nicole Smith = VIckIe Lynn Hogan
Robert Stack = Robert Modini
Cat Stevens (later, Yusuf Islam) = Stephen Demetre Georgiou
Jon Stewart = Jonathan Leibowitz
Jennifer Tilly = Jennifer Chan
Danny Thomas = Muzyad Yakhoob
Ritchie Valens = Ricardo Valenzuela
Frankie Valli = Francis Castelluccio
Jesse Ventura = James George Janos
Raquel Welch = Raquel Tejada
Nathaniel West = Nathaniel Wallenstein
Gene Wilder = Jerome Silberman
Natalie Wood = Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko
Thursday, October 29, 2009
fail to see how racism harms white people
The white community's first racial victim is its own child.
--Thandeka
These days, fewer and fewer white people think that non-white people suffer much racism at all anymore. They often think as well that if and when racism does happen to non-white people, it's a mere, temporary annoyance, and not the major set of hindrances it often is instead. And so, white people rarely consider the racism endured by non-white people worthy of much attention at all.
The "racism" that most white people attend to instead is that which they think they themselves suffer. They commonly call their grievances of this sort "reverse racism" -- the supposed slings and arrows flung at white people by affirmative action, for instance, or by the "real racists" who insist on keeping the idea of racism alive by "crying" about it so much.
What very few white people realize, beyond the fact that racism against non-whites remains insidiously pervasive, is that white racism has costs for white people -- a lot of them. But these costs of racism are not the ones that many white people think they suffer.
In his book Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, Paul Kivel writes that while "racism does produce material benefits for white people . . . the costs of racism to white people are devastating":
They are not the same costs as the day-to-day violence, discrimination, and harassment that people of color have to deal with. Nevertheless, they are significant costs that we have been trained to ignore, deny, or rationalize away. They are costs that other white people, particularly those with wealth, make us pay in our daily lives. It is sobering for us as white people to talk together about what it really costs to maintain such a system of division and exploitation in our society. We may even find it difficult to recognize some of the core costs of being white in our society.
Here's a summary of the costs of racism that Kivel says white people commonly suffer.
Kivel points out that because of racism, white people tend to:
- lose contact with our ancestral traditions and cultures (and often romanticize other cultures as a result)
- receive and believe a false sense of history, one that glorifies and sanitizes white actions and leaves out non-white contributions
- "lose the presence and contributions of people of color to our neighborhoods, schools, and relationships"
- feel "a false sense of superiority, a belief that we should be in control and in authority, and that people of color should be maids, servants, and gardeners and do the less valued work of our society"
- live, work, and play in settings that are largely white, and are thus "distorted, limited, and less rich" environments
- suffer in our relationships, with both white and non-white others, because of racial tension and/or bigotry
- suffer stress and anxiety induced by unrealistic fears of non-white people (and suffer at times as well from injury at the hands of certain white people, whom we'd been led by racist fear of non-white people into perceiving as relatively trustworthy)
- fail to see that we're being economically exploited by those who divert our aggrieved attention and energies into mistrust and hatred of racialized scapegoats
- suffer spiritually, to the extent that we've lost touch with our people's original spiritual traditions -- and thus suffer morally and ethically, to the extent that those traditions no longer encourage us to intervene when we "witness situations of discrimination and harassment"
- feel a lowered sense of self-esteem, due to our "feelings of guilt, shame, embarrassment, or inadequacy about racism and about our responses to it"
- become cynical, despairing, apathetic, and pessimistic when we do acknowledge the ongoing existence of white racism, and then realize that it "makes a mockery of our ideals of democracy, justice, and equality"
Again, as Kivel points out, to say that whites suffer from racism is not to say their suffering is anywhere near the devastating effects that it still has for many non-whites. Also, there is at least one danger in this method of eradicating racism: it could be taken by white people engaged in discussions of racism as an invitation to make everything all about themselves again.
What do you think? Is it worthwhile to encourage white people to also think of white racism in terms of the harm that it does to themselves and other white people?
If you have additions to the above list, please let us know in a comment -- are there other ways that white racism costs or harms white people?
After offering an extensive checklist that white people can use to examine the costs of racism to themselves and other white people they know, Kivel ends his chapter on the topic this way:
Realizing what those costs are can easily make us angry. If we are not careful, we can turn that anger toward people of color, blaming them for the problems of white racism. Sometimes we say things like, “If they weren’t here we would not have these problems.” But racism is caused by white people, by our attitudes, behaviors, practices, and institutions.
How is it that white people in general can justify retaining the benefits of being white without taking responsibility for perpetuating racism?
How do you justify it for yourself?
Sunday, October 11, 2009
shuttle ambivalently between whiteness and ethnicity
Tomorrow is Columbus Day in the United States. Like many other countries in "the Americas," we still mark this day, officially and otherwise. Celebrations of the efforts of Columbus usually erase the horrors of what he and his men did to indigenous peoples, thereby erasing as well the indigenous peoples themselves.
Many people in the U.S. remember this childish mnemonic device: "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." Far fewer have heard this worthy addition, by Historian James Loewen: "In fourteen hundred and ninety-three, Columbus stole all he could see."
Some white Americans, particularly those of Italian descent, remember Columbus differently, for their own ambivalent purposes. Considering how they do so can shed light on both the past and the present of racial whiteness, including who is now considered "white," what they and other "white ethnics" gave up in the process of becoming that way, and what they now try to recover or hold onto about themselves and their supposed heritage.
Christopher Columbus' first sighting of land that came to be known as "America" occurred on October 12, 1492. Columbus Day was first celebrated in the U.S. in 1792, in honor of the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing. Columbus was working at the time for the queen of Spain, and his efforts are widely credited with opening the door to Spanish conquest of "the Americas." In the mid-1800s, since Columbus himself was Italian, some Italian Americans began celebrating their heritage on Columbus Day.
As a result of this later, secondary remembrance, conflict has arisen when other groups, especially Native Americans, began protesting this holiday. For anyone who might still wonder why anyone would protest Columbus Day, Andrea Robideau, leader of a university-level Native American Women's Association, put it this way: “For a lot of native people, making Columbus Day a national holiday tells us that they honor someone who started a genocide against our people.” Robideau put it that way while she was selling t-shirts that read, "Killumbus."
Some Italian Americans take such protests against Columbus Day as an insult to their own heritage -- or perhaps to what remains of it, now that they and their ancestors have paid the price of the ticket into whiteness by bleaching away most of what marked them as "Italian." (And whether these ancestors even identified as "Italian" before arriving in the U.S., instead of as "Sicilian" or some other regional identity, is an interesting question.)
After their ancestors endured that cultural loss so that they and their descendants could enjoy being full-fledged "Americans," which at that time meant "white Americans," along came widespread recognition of non-whiteness via the Civil Rights Movement, and then the ascent in the 1990s of multiculturalism and/or "diversity," which mostly meant racial diversity. All of this new racial awareness and celebration made white Americans feel left out at times, as well as increasingly ambivalent about their own whiteness. After all, the only people affirming and celebrating that racial group were those who'd done obnoxious things with their heads, like putting pointy white sheets on them, or shaving them, or filling them with ridiculous, disproven ideas about the supposed superiority of a supposedly threatened white race.
And so it was that as fewer and fewer "white" people wanted to claim their racial grouping in some active, celebratory way, more and more of them turned instead to revival of the faded heritage of their European ancestors -- and not just Italian Americans.
In an article about this kind of "ethnic revival," scholar Matthew Frye Jacobson writes:
The leader of an anti-racism workshop in the 1990s once noted a disquieting inclination on the part of white participants to dissociate themselves from the advantages of whiteness by emphasizing some purportedly not-quite-white ethnic background. "I'm not white; I'm Italian," one would say. Another, "I'm Jewish." After this ripple had made its way across the group, the seminar leader was left wondering, "What happened to all the white people who were here just a minute ago?"
The sense of a sentence like "I'm not white, I'm Italian" rests upon several historical preconditions, now loosely relayed in the term "ethnic revival": the Civil Rights Movement heightened whites' consciousness of their skin privilege, rendering it both visible and newly uncomfortable. The example of black nationalism and later multiculturalism provided a new language for -- and perceived cache in -- the specificities of an identity that was not simply "American." After decades of striving to conform to the Anglo-Saxon standard, descendants of earlier European immigrants quit the melting pot. Italianness, Jewishness or Greekness were now badges of pride, not shame.
One unfortunate result, Jacobson goes on to note, is the tendency to hold up European immigrants as the real "model minority," a highly dubious honor normally given to Asian Americans:Despite recent fixations on Asian-American success . . . European immigrants remain the nation's real "model minority": Their saga supplies the "standard" template of incorporation and advancement against which all other groups are judged. It supplied the post-slavery, fresh-off-the-boat innocents who have become the most potent symbol in protests against affirmative action, busing or reparations.
In conservative populism, white ethnics represent precisely those little people so in need of protection from the excesses of liberal social policy; and their exemplary mobility -- from steerage to ghetto to suburb -- is deployed in damning critique of both the contemporary welfare state and contemporary ghetto-dwellers.
As the following two television clips demonstrate, the conflicted feelings of people who can be described (rather oxymoronically) as "white ethnics" have made their way into popular culture. In the first, from "The Sopranos," New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano struggles, in his usual NSFW way, to articulate his mixed allegiances -- being Italian versus being white -- to some of his loyal minions, who are upset about upcoming protests against a Columbus Day parade. The second clip, from "Mad TV," satirizes both Italian American stereotypes and the whitening process of assimilation.
In both cases, the alternating sympathies of such "white ethnics" are on display, in a sort of ambivalent shuttling back and forth between polar attractions: the privileges and comforts of whiteness, and the warm, nostalgic memory of a faded group identity. Like such memories of other white ethnics,this collective identity can be as confused and delusional as the ongoing and uncritical celebration of Columbus Day -- a "celebration" of the beginnings of an Anglo-Saxon empire in an Italian mercenary's efforts to extend the rapacious and murderous plunderings of Spanish royalty.
[An earlier version of this post appeared here last year; h/t for the Reconsider Columbus Day video: Irene's Daughters]
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
wear their whiteness with humility
Edward Moore Kennedy(1932 - 2009)
What do you think of The Root's (unsigned) eulogy for Ted Kennedy? The editors applaud how he and the other Kennedys carried their whitened selves: "They didn't wear their whiteness with authority -- they were big on playing the human card and left matters of race and class to be argued by the pundits."
Brother Kennedy: Good White Folk
The Root
For the longest time, besides family, black people would only put three pictures up on the wall: Jesus Christ, Nipsey Russell and John F. Kennedy. The Kennedys, in general, have always had a soft spot in the hearts of many black folks because they have always been, as old timers say, "good white folk." The kind of white person you didn't have to worry about giving you the soul handshake (WTF?), talking black jive to get along or dropping the "N" bomb by accident. They were the kind of white people who are at ease with everyone; white people you could have over to dinner. The Kennedys as Irishmen, knew how it felt to be marginalized and, despite their wealth, this marginalization seemed to inform the politics of the whole family. The passing of Edward "Ted" Kennedy last night doesn't just leave a gap in the Democratic Party. Who will bring his empathy and compassion for the rest of America? Who will take up his causes?
John, Robert and Ted were different men with seemingly the same directive: to make America's dream accessible to everyone. John, Robert and Ted Kennedy seemed not to be just pandering politicians, but officials who people of color could trust to listen and respond, to act in the interest of people struggling to grasp a hold of the American Dream; to acknowledge everyone as stakeholder and not dismiss The Others as irrelevant. The Kennedys seem to value compassion as an essential human virtue and walked the talk in ways uncommon for politicians of any stripe. They didn't wear their whiteness with authority -- they were big on playing the human card and left matters of race and class to be argued by the pundits. Ted Kennedy wanted a more perfect union and was willing to fight for it.
When he cosigned Barack Obama last year, Ted Kennedy helped assuage a lot of fears among white and black Americans: his "ups" signified to many that Obama could be trusted to uphold what was important to this country. Ted Kennedy was not a perfect man by any stretch, but he was the kind of white man you sometimes find at black barbecues and barbershops, enjoying a drink, a plate or a laugh. The only white man at your wedding, the only white person your grandparents ever let in the house because he was at ease. He was at home. He left his burden of privilege at the door. You know who I'm talking about -- Ted Kennedy was that dude.
Brother Kennedy: Good White Folk.
Now that Ted Kennedy has passed, who has the gravitas, the compassion and the credentials to take up his mantle?
I also recommend Nezua's post at The Unapologetic Mexican, which includes a formal statement of appreciation for Senator Kennedy by the United Farm Workers, and a sober assessment by Louis Proyect of some other features of his legislative work at The Unrepentant Marxist.
Friday, August 21, 2009
miss "their" america
These days, a lot of people in the United States are decrying the loss of "their" America. So far, every person that I've seen crying like that is a white person.
I mean, seriously -- how many non-white Americans go around shouting, "I want my America back!"
In other words, just what kind of America is it that these white Americans -- most of whom would never, ever consider themselves capable of a "racist" act -- just what kind of America is it, in racial terms, that they want back?
For a more sober analysis of the racism that's been bubbling up during the great health care debate, I highly recommend two recent pieces by Tim Wise, who identifies this racist resurgence as symptomatic of a conservative "movement."
This movement, Wise writes, "is trying desperately to create a groundswell of support behind the notion that white people are the new victims of massive discrimination, the new victims of the Obama era: the ones who don’t get picked first for the Supreme Court, and who can no longer take for granted their hegemonic power."
Wise explains how and why conservatives are reframing socialism as the "new black bogeyman" here, and the bizarre connections they're making between health care, Obama, and Hitler here.
The good old days are gone for good. Of course, they never really were all that good, were they. Why is it so hard for some folks to keep in mind that "Leave It to Beaver" was just a TV show?
I mean, seriously -- how many non-white Americans go around shouting, "I want my America back!"
In other words, just what kind of America is it that these white Americans -- most of whom would never, ever consider themselves capable of a "racist" act -- just what kind of America is it, in racial terms, that they want back?
Jon Stewart and Larry Wilmore
"The Daily Show"
For a more sober analysis of the racism that's been bubbling up during the great health care debate, I highly recommend two recent pieces by Tim Wise, who identifies this racist resurgence as symptomatic of a conservative "movement."
This movement, Wise writes, "is trying desperately to create a groundswell of support behind the notion that white people are the new victims of massive discrimination, the new victims of the Obama era: the ones who don’t get picked first for the Supreme Court, and who can no longer take for granted their hegemonic power."
Wise explains how and why conservatives are reframing socialism as the "new black bogeyman" here, and the bizarre connections they're making between health care, Obama, and Hitler here.
The good old days are gone for good. Of course, they never really were all that good, were they. Why is it so hard for some folks to keep in mind that "Leave It to Beaver" was just a TV show?
"Leave It to Beaver"
(the "Magical Beatnik-jazz Hairdo" episode)
Thursday, August 6, 2009
forget the whiteness of the bomb
Personally, the writer of this book would rather see his race and his civilization blotted out with the atomic bomb than to see it slowly but surely destroyed in the maelstrom of miscegenation, interbreeding, intermarriage and mongrelization. The destruction in either case would be inevitable -- one in a flash and the other by the slow but certain process of sin, degradation, and mongrelization.
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 9, "Fat Man" destroyed much of Nagasaki. An estimated 220,000 people were killed by those attacks, about half of them on the two bombing days. On August 15, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers. So far, no other nation has attacked another with nuclear weapons.
In 1964, Stanley Kubrick released Dr. Strangelove, a scathing cinematic satire about the effects on global politics of something new in the world: "The Bomb." In Kubrick's view, the fact that humanity could obliterate life on earth with the push of a button made the whole idea of life on earth sort of absurd.
Also absurd, he realized, was something especially white American about The Bomb. In Dr. Strangelove, he emphasizes this whiteness with the character of Major T. J. "King" Kong, the pilot who guides the crew that drops the bomb that sets off a nuclear winter.
Kubrick highlights American whiteness by having Slim Pickens play Major Kong as a cussing, cowboy-hatted, good ol' boy, who mispronounces "nuclear" the same way that George Bush, Jr. did, and who rides the bomb on its journey to earth as if he's riding a rodeo bull.
With the characterization of cowboy Kong, and with that of Dr. Strangelove as a trusted, Nazi-worshiping adviser to U.S. President Merkin Muffley (both played by Peter Sellers), Kubrick satirized the ironic whiteness at the core of America's identity during World War II and the subsequent Cold War period. The irony is that while this white nationalist core helped to guide American policy both at home and abroad, American propaganda during World War II had emphasized the racist ideologies of Germany and Japan as fundamentally evil features of their "evil empires."
As Ken Cooper explains in an essay entitled "The Whiteness of the Bomb," various features of the American mindset that led to the dropping of actual nuclear bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also reflected the general assumption that America was a "white" country. Because the Japanese were "non-white," dropping the Bomb on them wasn't as morally troubling to most Americans as it might have been. As it might have been, that is, if the question were instead whether to drop it on a "white" country.
In Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb, Japanese American historian Ronald Takaki writes about the man who made the final decision to destroy two Japanese cities, President Harry Truman. This was the same man who, when he was younger, wrote the following in a letter to his future wife, Bess:
I think one man is as good as another, so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. My uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America.
As Ken Cooper notes, though, not all Americans were blind to the racism of dropping the Bomb on Japan. For instance, an editorial cartoonist for a leading black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, found it significant that right after the war ended,
occupying forces aboard the Mississippi entered Japan with a Confederate flag flying and a band playing "Dixie." Langston Hughes wondered, by way of a conversation with his alter ego, Jesse ('Simple') Semple, whether America would have dropped the bomb on "white folks" like the Germans. Simple maintains that the United States has waited "until the war is over in Europe to try them out on colored folks."
Nowadays, it seems that the American keepers of the largest nuclear arsenal on earth still think of the Bomb in racial terms. While some non-white nations now have the Bomb, it would be useful to see the racial composition of nuclear arms bearing countries -- how many are primarily white versus non-white? Who has been "allowed" to have them, and who has done the allowing?
Apparently, among the many economic and geopolitical "concerns" of (primarily white) American leaders is the non-whiteness of those who might acquire nuclear weapons. Japan has not been allowed to have a nuclear weapon, perhaps because America fears retaliation, and George Bush breathed fire at "evil" North Korea when it threatened to build one (his administration later turned down the heat on North Korea, apparently because it went ahead and built one anyway).
The non-white countries of India and Pakistan now have nuclear weapons, as does the somewhat less non-white country of Israel, but they're American allies -- perhaps that's why drumming up a racist perception of them as a nuclear threat was therefore deemed unnecessary. The latest perceived non-white threat in these terms is Iran, a country that American leaders have lately been threatening to attack for the (perhaps ostensible) reason that it might acquire nuclear weapons.
Americans during World War II were likely more accepting of a Bomb drop on Japanese people than they would have been on German people because Japanese people were racially "different," and thus easier to dehumanize in propaganda efforts. Does today's new racist propaganda -- the endless stream of swarthy, grimacing, cartoonish Arab "terrorists" -- contribute to America's discontent with the idea of an Iranian nuclear state, by again dehumanizing an "enemy"?
As Americans remember the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their people, will many at all remember how racist the decision to do so was? And how ironic and hypocritical that decision therefore was?
How "white," then, does the Bomb remain?
(an earlier version of this post appeared here)
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 9, "Fat Man" destroyed much of Nagasaki. An estimated 220,000 people were killed by those attacks, about half of them on the two bombing days. On August 15, Japan announced its surrender to the Allied Powers. So far, no other nation has attacked another with nuclear weapons.
In 1964, Stanley Kubrick released Dr. Strangelove, a scathing cinematic satire about the effects on global politics of something new in the world: "The Bomb." In Kubrick's view, the fact that humanity could obliterate life on earth with the push of a button made the whole idea of life on earth sort of absurd.
Also absurd, he realized, was something especially white American about The Bomb. In Dr. Strangelove, he emphasizes this whiteness with the character of Major T. J. "King" Kong, the pilot who guides the crew that drops the bomb that sets off a nuclear winter.
Kubrick highlights American whiteness by having Slim Pickens play Major Kong as a cussing, cowboy-hatted, good ol' boy, who mispronounces "nuclear" the same way that George Bush, Jr. did, and who rides the bomb on its journey to earth as if he's riding a rodeo bull.
With the characterization of cowboy Kong, and with that of Dr. Strangelove as a trusted, Nazi-worshiping adviser to U.S. President Merkin Muffley (both played by Peter Sellers), Kubrick satirized the ironic whiteness at the core of America's identity during World War II and the subsequent Cold War period. The irony is that while this white nationalist core helped to guide American policy both at home and abroad, American propaganda during World War II had emphasized the racist ideologies of Germany and Japan as fundamentally evil features of their "evil empires."
As Ken Cooper explains in an essay entitled "The Whiteness of the Bomb," various features of the American mindset that led to the dropping of actual nuclear bombs, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also reflected the general assumption that America was a "white" country. Because the Japanese were "non-white," dropping the Bomb on them wasn't as morally troubling to most Americans as it might have been. As it might have been, that is, if the question were instead whether to drop it on a "white" country.
In Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb, Japanese American historian Ronald Takaki writes about the man who made the final decision to destroy two Japanese cities, President Harry Truman. This was the same man who, when he was younger, wrote the following in a letter to his future wife, Bess:
I think one man is as good as another, so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. My uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America.
Elsewhere in his book, Takaki shows that while Truman did not order the use of nuclear weapons for the express purpose of killing Japanese people because they were Japanese, the fact that America and other Allied nations considered their non-white opponents subhuman clearly played a significant role in that decision. And thanks to the dehumanizing depictions of Japanese people in war-time propaganda, most Americans found the decision to target the civilian populations of two entire cities easier to accept.
As Ken Cooper notes, though, not all Americans were blind to the racism of dropping the Bomb on Japan. For instance, an editorial cartoonist for a leading black newspaper, the Chicago Defender, found it significant that right after the war ended,
occupying forces aboard the Mississippi entered Japan with a Confederate flag flying and a band playing "Dixie." Langston Hughes wondered, by way of a conversation with his alter ego, Jesse ('Simple') Semple, whether America would have dropped the bomb on "white folks" like the Germans. Simple maintains that the United States has waited "until the war is over in Europe to try them out on colored folks."
Nowadays, it seems that the American keepers of the largest nuclear arsenal on earth still think of the Bomb in racial terms. While some non-white nations now have the Bomb, it would be useful to see the racial composition of nuclear arms bearing countries -- how many are primarily white versus non-white? Who has been "allowed" to have them, and who has done the allowing?
Apparently, among the many economic and geopolitical "concerns" of (primarily white) American leaders is the non-whiteness of those who might acquire nuclear weapons. Japan has not been allowed to have a nuclear weapon, perhaps because America fears retaliation, and George Bush breathed fire at "evil" North Korea when it threatened to build one (his administration later turned down the heat on North Korea, apparently because it went ahead and built one anyway).
The non-white countries of India and Pakistan now have nuclear weapons, as does the somewhat less non-white country of Israel, but they're American allies -- perhaps that's why drumming up a racist perception of them as a nuclear threat was therefore deemed unnecessary. The latest perceived non-white threat in these terms is Iran, a country that American leaders have lately been threatening to attack for the (perhaps ostensible) reason that it might acquire nuclear weapons.
Americans during World War II were likely more accepting of a Bomb drop on Japanese people than they would have been on German people because Japanese people were racially "different," and thus easier to dehumanize in propaganda efforts. Does today's new racist propaganda -- the endless stream of swarthy, grimacing, cartoonish Arab "terrorists" -- contribute to America's discontent with the idea of an Iranian nuclear state, by again dehumanizing an "enemy"?
As Americans remember the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their people, will many at all remember how racist the decision to do so was? And how ironic and hypocritical that decision therefore was?
How "white," then, does the Bomb remain?
THE END
(an earlier version of this post appeared here)
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
see "white" and "male" as neutral conditions
I think it's always worth noting when someone in the corporate media points out the following:
The raced and gendered identities of white men tend to go unnoticed in our white-framed society, allowing white men to pass under the banners of such adjectives as "objective," "neutral," "unbiased," and so on. Who they are supposedly has little or nothing to do with how they think.
You need to read today's Washington Post column (excerpted below) by Eugene Robinson.
It's been my understanding for awhile now that this white-male identity charade is much more visible as the farce that it is to people who are not white and male. It's no surprise to me, then, that Eugene Robinson is black.
Non-white people have a lot to teach white people, not necessarily about non-white people, but about ourselves. As Richard Wright said decades ago, "White Man, Listen!" Maybe Sonia Sotomayor's hearings will in part serve that purpose, forcing white men to listen to someone who understands that everyone's social positionings affect how they view and "judge" the world.
White men often simply don't see how they're fooling themselves this way. In many cases, and probably most, it's not that white men are pretending to be more objective and neutral and so on than say, a black civil rights leader, or a Latina Supreme Court nominee. They just assume that they are, without even consciously thinking they are. And yet, to assume that women and people of color are subjective, biased, and so on is, nevertheless, to assume and imply the opposite about oneself.
As a white man who's still trying to keep this common white tendency up in the more conscious realms of my own psyche, I'm grateful to Eugene Robinson for calling out so clearly its most recent public display. Maybe some of those important white men will read his column and really listen, especially to such bits as these (and again, I strongly recommend the whole thing):
Whose Identity Politics?
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The only real suspense in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is whether the Republican Party will persist in tying its fortunes to an anachronistic claim of white male exceptionalism and privilege.
Republicans' outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor's musings about how her identity as a "wise Latina" might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any "identity" -- black, brown, female, gay, whatever -- has to be judged against this supposedly "objective" standard.
Thus it is irrelevant if Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. talks about the impact of his background as the son of Italian immigrants on his rulings -- as he did at his confirmation hearings -- but unforgivable for Sotomayor to mention that her Puerto Rican family history might be relevant to her work. Thus it is possible for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to say with a straight face that heritage and experience can have no bearing on a judge's work, as he posited in his opening remarks yesterday, apparently believing that the white male justices he has voted to confirm were somehow devoid of heritage and bereft of experience.
The whole point of Sotomayor's much-maligned "wise Latina" speech was that everyone has a unique personal history -- and that this history has to be acknowledged before it can be overcome. Denying the fact of identity makes us vulnerable to its most pernicious effects. This seems self-evident. I don't see how a political party that refuses to accept this basic principle of diversity can hope to prosper, given that soon there will be no racial or ethnic majority in this country.
Yet the Republican Party line assumes a white male neutrality against which Sotomayor's "difference" will be judged. . . .
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was more temperate in his remarks than most of his colleagues, noting that Obama's election victory ought to have consequences and hinting that he might vote to confirm Sotomayor. But when he brought up the "wise Latina" remark, as the GOP playbook apparently required, Graham said that "if I had said anything remotely like that, my career would have been over."
That's true. But if Latinas had run the world for the last millennium, Sotomayor's career would be over, too. Pretending that the historical context doesn't exist -- pretending that white men haven't enjoyed a privileged position in this society -- doesn't make that context go away. . . .
(read the rest)
h/t: resistance at Resist Racism
The raced and gendered identities of white men tend to go unnoticed in our white-framed society, allowing white men to pass under the banners of such adjectives as "objective," "neutral," "unbiased," and so on. Who they are supposedly has little or nothing to do with how they think.
You need to read today's Washington Post column (excerpted below) by Eugene Robinson.
It's been my understanding for awhile now that this white-male identity charade is much more visible as the farce that it is to people who are not white and male. It's no surprise to me, then, that Eugene Robinson is black.
Non-white people have a lot to teach white people, not necessarily about non-white people, but about ourselves. As Richard Wright said decades ago, "White Man, Listen!" Maybe Sonia Sotomayor's hearings will in part serve that purpose, forcing white men to listen to someone who understands that everyone's social positionings affect how they view and "judge" the world.
White men often simply don't see how they're fooling themselves this way. In many cases, and probably most, it's not that white men are pretending to be more objective and neutral and so on than say, a black civil rights leader, or a Latina Supreme Court nominee. They just assume that they are, without even consciously thinking they are. And yet, to assume that women and people of color are subjective, biased, and so on is, nevertheless, to assume and imply the opposite about oneself.
As a white man who's still trying to keep this common white tendency up in the more conscious realms of my own psyche, I'm grateful to Eugene Robinson for calling out so clearly its most recent public display. Maybe some of those important white men will read his column and really listen, especially to such bits as these (and again, I strongly recommend the whole thing):
Whose Identity Politics?
By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
The only real suspense in the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is whether the Republican Party will persist in tying its fortunes to an anachronistic claim of white male exceptionalism and privilege.
Republicans' outrage, both real and feigned, at Sotomayor's musings about how her identity as a "wise Latina" might affect her judicial decisions is based on a flawed assumption: that whiteness and maleness are not themselves facets of a distinct identity. Being white and male is seen instead as a neutral condition, the natural order of things. Any "identity" -- black, brown, female, gay, whatever -- has to be judged against this supposedly "objective" standard.
Thus it is irrelevant if Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. talks about the impact of his background as the son of Italian immigrants on his rulings -- as he did at his confirmation hearings -- but unforgivable for Sotomayor to mention that her Puerto Rican family history might be relevant to her work. Thus it is possible for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to say with a straight face that heritage and experience can have no bearing on a judge's work, as he posited in his opening remarks yesterday, apparently believing that the white male justices he has voted to confirm were somehow devoid of heritage and bereft of experience.
The whole point of Sotomayor's much-maligned "wise Latina" speech was that everyone has a unique personal history -- and that this history has to be acknowledged before it can be overcome. Denying the fact of identity makes us vulnerable to its most pernicious effects. This seems self-evident. I don't see how a political party that refuses to accept this basic principle of diversity can hope to prosper, given that soon there will be no racial or ethnic majority in this country.
Yet the Republican Party line assumes a white male neutrality against which Sotomayor's "difference" will be judged. . . .
Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) was more temperate in his remarks than most of his colleagues, noting that Obama's election victory ought to have consequences and hinting that he might vote to confirm Sotomayor. But when he brought up the "wise Latina" remark, as the GOP playbook apparently required, Graham said that "if I had said anything remotely like that, my career would have been over."
That's true. But if Latinas had run the world for the last millennium, Sotomayor's career would be over, too. Pretending that the historical context doesn't exist -- pretending that white men haven't enjoyed a privileged position in this society -- doesn't make that context go away. . . .
(read the rest)
h/t: resistance at Resist Racism
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
refuse to swim with black people
Demonstration at an “all-white” swimming poolCairo, Illinois, 1962
Early in Kansas history, Blacks and Whites shared the same churches, schools, and public facilities. As time passed, though, segregation became more common.
In practice, many public places--especially in larger cities -- were segregated. The town of Lawrence, an antislavery stronghold in territorial days, had a segregated swimming pool as late as the 1960s.
African American poet Langston Hughes lived in Lawrence much of his childhood. In his autobiography, Hughes remembered not being able to accompany his white friends to the pool.
"Misery is when you find out your bosom buddy can go in the swimming pool but you can't."
--Langston Hughes, Black Misery, 1969
(source: Kansas State Historical Society)
During the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, a key site of struggle for desegregation of separate-but-obviously-unequal spaces was the public swimming pool. As the Movement gained undeniable credibility with most white Americans, one particular mode of racial interaction took white Americans an extra-long time to get used to -- getting in the water with black people, and especially letting one's kids get in the water with black kids.
In many places, white-controlled pools remained segregated longer than other nearby public facilities. Private swimming pools typically stayed that way for even longer.
By now, in our supposedly "postracial" times, you might think that white discomfort with swimming alongside black people would be long gone. But if you do think that, you'd best think again.
As Philadelphia's NBC affiliate reports today, a private club near Philadelphia is still turning away black swimmers:
More than 60 campers from Northeast Philadelphia were turned away from a private swim club and left to wonder if their race was the reason.
"I heard this lady, she was like, 'Uh, what are all these black kids doing here?' She's like, 'I'm scared they might do something to my child,'" said camper Dymire Baylor.
The Creative Steps Day Camp paid more than $1900 to The Valley Swim Club. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership. But the campers' first visit to the pool suggested otherwise.
"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."
The next day the club told the camp director that the camp's membership was being suspended and their money would be refunded.
"I said, 'The parents don't want the refund. They want a place for their children to swim,'" camp director Aetha Wright said.
Campers remain unsure why they're no longer welcome.
"They just kicked us out. And we were about to go. Had our swim things and everything," said camper Simer Burwell.
The explanation they got was either dishearteningly honest or poorly worded.
"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion. . . and the atmosphere of the club," John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club said in a statement. . . .
The "complexion"? Did he really say that?!
Here's the NBC affiliate's video report, which includes some interviews that I found heartbreaking.
To think that racist attitudes today still make some kids feel the way Langston Hughes felt as a child, who just wanted to go swimming in a nice pool, so many, many summers ago . . .
[h/t: Carmen D of All About Race, via email]
UPDATE: The Field Negro writes,
Holla at the folks at The Valley Swim Club and let them know that in the age of Obama even little Negroes should be able to swim in peace.
THE VALLEY SWIM CLUB
22 TOMLINSON RD
HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA 19006
HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA 19006
(215) 947-0700
And their email: info@thevalleyclub.com
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
claim they have native american blood
But here methinks I can hear you observe What! Englishmen intermarry with Indians? But I can convince you they are guilty of much more heinous practices, more unjustifiable in the sight of God and man. . . for many base wretches amongst us take up with negro women, by which means the country swarms with mulatto bastards, and these mulattoes, if but three generations removed from the black father or mother, may, by the indulgence of the laws of the country, intermarry with the white people, and actually do every day so marry.
Now, if instead of this abominable practice which hath polluted the blood of many amongst us, we had taken Indian wives in the first place, it would have made them some compensation for their lands. . . . We should become rightful heirs to their lands, and should not have smutted our blood . . .
There's long been a belief among the many family members on my father's side that my father's grandmother was "part Indian." From what I've gathered, such claims are common in white families in the United States. White claims about what may be just as likely -- being part black -- are almost non-existent.
I would like to know what percentage of Americans who self-identify as white contain non-white blood, but reading around on the topic tells me that any particular statistics are not universally accepted by genealogical and DNA experts.
Also, since so many people who did have African or Native blood and could pass for white did so, only DNA tests for a large percentage of white Americans could provide reliable percentages (but even then, the tests themselves aren't necessarily reliable -- the "Native American" results, for example, could be confused with Asian ancestry, given the geographic origins of Native Americans).
According to a Guardian article by Paul Harris on the increasing popularity of genetic testing, "One-third of white Americans, according to some tests, will possess between two and 20 per cent African genes. The majority of black Americans have some European ancestors." (I've yet to find informed estimates of white Americans with Native American genes -- please tell us in a comment if you know of any.)
Harris points out that "Native Americans are growing in numbers, not because of a high birth rate, but because many Americans are discovering unknown native ancestors written in their DNA."
I doubt the same discovery about African American blood is causing that recorded population to increase. Given the regularity with which white Americans impregnated slaves in order, among other reasons, to increase their "property" (and then going on, in some cases, to sell their own children), and again, given the ability of many light-skinned "black" Americans to pass into white society -- given these and other factors, I would think that DNA tests for whites probably turn up more African American than Native American blood. And yet, few white people who find black blood probably go on to proclaim their black ancestry, while many who find Native American blood do go on to proclaim that ancestry.
I should also note that white people in the United States are not the only ones who hope to find Native American ancestry. Many African Americans seek it as well, and significant interaction between the two groups means that some find it. And many Latino/a Americans, of course, don't have to search far at all to find their Native American roots.
Some of the white Americans who take DNA tests or search census and birth records for Native American ancestry do so in the hopes of claiming financial benefits. As Harris writes,
Native Americans often complain they are swamped by "American Indian Princess syndrome," because every white person wants native DNA in their past. In a world of minority grants, scholarships and Indian gambling rights, any debate over DNA and race could easily also become an argument over resources.
Some of these questing white Americans just want to know "who they are." This strikes me as a a dubious quest -- would finding some Native American or black blood really make a person who was raised white, looks white, and gets taken and treated as white, any more "black" or "Indian"?
It's also clear that most white people looking for Native American ancestry are hoping to establish a more romanticized connection to Indian-ness. A connection based in, and stuck in, the past, much more so than the present.
These are the white searchers (sometimes called "pretendians") who hope to fill up a certain emptiness in their bleached-out, whitened identity, but want little part of actual, ongoing Native American struggles. Many of them will never go to a reservation to experience the results of white genocidal practices, even if they do find Native American blood in their DNA. They're rarely willing to fight for treaty rights, nor help with such contemporary problems as compulsory sterilization or substance abuse. Indeed, they're rarely willing to even acknowledge these problems, or do much of anything else that goes beyond vague, sentimental ideas of supposedly authentic Indian-ness.
So why do a lot of white people cherish the possibility of Native American blood so much more than that of African American blood, even when the latter may well be a more likely part of their background?
I think as with the cherished Native American possibility, their distaste and sometimes even disgust for the possibility of black ancestors is based on received notions from the past, but also on those of the present. Ever since slavery in the U.S. was limited to black people in order to divide them from working white people, they've been the most despised racial group. Any sober look at today's American culture in general -- the primary source of our received notions about other people -- would reveal that disdain for racial minorities continues to be strongest for black people.
Actually, common white notions of American Indians are also largely ingested from current cultural imagery, from "brave" or "noble" team mascots, to the continued predominance of TV and movie images of long-gone Indians over accurate representations of the remaining ones actually living today. As gwen notes in a Sociological Images post on this anachronistic tendency in non-indigenous appreciation of "Indian art,"
This tendency is apparent in other elements of U.S. culture, of course: movies like “Dances with Wolves,” books about “noble savages,” and conflicts over what types of technologies American Indians can use when spear fishing (with non-Indians arguing Indians should only be able to use the methods that their tribes used in the 1800s) all indicate a wider perception that “authentic” Indians should inhabit a time-warp universe in which their cultures and lifestyles have remained basically unchanged since the late 1800s or early 1900s, a requirement we don’t ask of other groups.
As far as I know, no one in my family has taken a DNA test to settle the question of whether we actually have Native American ancestors. If some of my relatives do decide to do it, I hope I get a chance to talk to them about just what it is they're really looking for. I'd also like to know what they plan to do if they find something else.
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