alias_sqbr | I am not my grandmother

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Current Mood: contemplative

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From:

ataxi.livejournal.com

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

I went off and read the

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

From:

big-n-happy.livejournal.com

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

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

From:

ataxi.livejournal.com

I made that point because of

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

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

Returning to

alias_sqbr's post and that of

rivka we can observe a dynamic in which white speakers in a community of discussion are inclined away from an exposition of the range of difference within the "white monolith" using reasoning such as (

rivka):

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

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

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

From:

big-n-happy.livejournal.com

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

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

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

From:

ataxi.livejournal.com

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