MochaSoul
It's being enslaved of your own free will
That's just silly. I don't see the activist community in Spokane distancing themselves from her. I see them angered by the fact that she lied about herself in order to be allowed in as one of them.
White civil rights leader has pretended to be black for years
- Thread starter trashpony
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That's just silly. I don't see the activist community in Spokane distancing themselves from her. I see them angered by the fact that she lied about herself in order to be allowed in as one of them.
Treacle Toes
Time
Let's look at another aspect of why/how she is 'fucking' with real lives... There is no doubt that in the States the ideology that feeds the imagined absolute binary of people being either Black or White is widespread, still..however it's been 52 years almost till the day since the 'Lovings Vs the State' landmark ruling,
'Fuming today, though not surprised. Took my son to a new doctor today and was given a tablet with "digital paperwork." Filling out the demographic section, I came to a page where race was requested. There were about twenty selections--a credit to that office, sure--but it was very clear on this point: "SELECT ONLY ONE, PLEASE." As if others had tried to defy that rule before and the office was tired of it. When I complained at the desk that no "one race" applied, I was told, that I should select "UNDETERMINED." There was no point in making a stink then and there. It certainly wasn't the receptionist's fault, so, begrudgingly, I selected UNDETERMINED. (There was no place to click "skip," which would have been my choice.) Seriously now, if the rule is "select one race only," there must be a multi- option. Even "Other" would have been better than undetermined. We know who we are. Neither, I nor my children are UNDETERMINED. We are not space creatures. We are black and white, regardless of how we appear. Just sayin'.
Ponder that experience for a moment, ^^^ That is a real, everyday person from a multiethnic family in the US, those children are her biological children...
...now take those thoughts back to RD...an educated person, undoubtably schooled in the insiduousness of racist ideology and how that permeates institutionally, relationally and internally...yet there she is...using those absolute, imagined racial markers, despite all she knows about the consequences of doing so, those things that she has supposed to be fighting against for all these years, to play smoke and mirrors in order to validate her own overinvolved and selfish deceptions.
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8ball
Decolonise colons!
Let's look at another aspect of why/how she is 'fucking' with real lives... There is no doubt that in the States the ideology that feeds the imagined absolute binary of people being either Black or White is widespread, still..however it's been 52 years almost till the day since the 'Lovings Vs the State' landmark ruling,miscegenationethnic mixing, intercultural marriage, all of it is widespread yet hypodescent/the one drop rule continues to be perpetuated...a post I read today from a online group i've been apart of for many years:
'Fuming today, though not surprised. Took my son to a new doctor today and was given a tablet with "digital paperwork." Filling out the demographic section, I came to a page where race was requested. There were about twenty selections--a credit to that office, sure--but it was very clear on this point: "SELECT ONLY ONE, PLEASE." As if others had tried to defy that rule before and the office was tired of it. When I complained at the desk that no "one race" applied, I was told, that I should select "UNDETERMINED." There was no point in making a stink then and there. It certainly wasn't the receptionist's fault, so, begrudgingly, I selected UNDETERMINED. (There was no place to click "skip," which would have been my choice.) Seriously now, if the rule is "select one race only," there must be a multi- option. Even "Other" would have been better than undetermined. We know who we are. Neither, I nor my children are UNDETERMINED. We are not space creatures. We are black and white, regardless of how we appear. Just sayin'.
Ponder that experience for a moment, ^^^ That is a real, everyday person from a multiethnic family in the US, those children are her biological children...
...now take those thoughts back to RD...an educated person, undoubtably schooled in the insiduousness of racist ideology and how that permeates institutionally, relationally and internally...yet there she is...using those absolute, imagined racial markers, despite all she knows about the consequences of doing so, those things that she has supposed to be fighting against for all these years, to play smoke and mirrors in order to validate her own overinvolved and selfish deceptions.
I'm not sure I'd have much more sympathy if she had gone for something a little more nuanced - there have been a lot of lies. So many we're having trouble keeping up.
Treacle Toes
Time
There are real, actual consequences to her lies...to her positioning herself as 'having gone there with Blackness' to her citing the things she has done for the Black community etc yet still she is using the exact same ideological framework to perpetuate the very thing she claimed all along to be fighting against...in doing so she is dismissing the everyday micro-traumas that ideology causes as we go about our lives, as collateral damage...because she needs to come out of this intact, right, right-on, have ownership.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
I hear you, but I'm having a hard time seeing the perpetuation of the binary (which is already embedded in the culture and would be part of the popular interpretation of things even if her claim was more nuanced - if she had said it differently people would still filter that through the model) as a significant addition to the considerable harm she has done and seems pretty fucking intent on continuing.
keybored
Well done. You remember cat good.
Treacle Toes
Time
The perpetuation is that you publically have to choose one or the other. Most people don't live their lives in that way...culture is a much more fluid thing as I am sure you are aware and have lived. The fact that people have to engage with the 'binary' in the example/ways like I posted above is only one aspect of it. Yet it is reinforced when we have to, like that lady did in the example above.
RD knows this..that makes her deception sinister...she claims to be about the collective..yet...
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Yeah, I understand this. It just seems like adding a few pebbles to what is already a landslide of shittiness.
For instance, if she'd wheeled out a fake white Mum to match her fake white Dad, and called herself 'multiracial' I'd not see that as making a jot of difference in terms of harm done.
Those wanting to make capital from this would just hear what they want to hear anyway.
Treacle Toes
Time
True but...... all I can say is the detail/s have always been important to me. Something in how I particularly experience the world and make sense of it. That's where I meet other people, in the real sense...in the details of what it is to be them.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
... all I can say is the detail/s have always been important to me. Something in how I particularly experience the world and make sense of it. That's where I meet other people, in the real sense...in the details of what it is to be them.
Well, in terms of what it is to be me it's pretty bizarre (racist Dad and half-black Mum who has internalised a lot of bad shit and also hated her (black) father who was by all accounts a total shithead, though I always got on with him). Only ever really talked about that with ymu, who hasn't been in for ages.
Added a bit to my previous post btw. I always think of more stuff after clicking 'post'.
Treacle Toes
Time
I've read your additions ...and I think that she would have been called 'self hating' , a fantascist, she'd be accused of 'passing'...if it were the other way around. As much as I hate that generalisation, that exists ...and it is probably why the detail is important to me.
As for your story...depending on where we are born and in to which families it is not uncommon to some extent IME. I posted a link a few pages ago..I'll go get it...to a quote from a article written by someone who is mIxed/from a multiethic family who I think nails it...despite who our parents are or are not...we have and are ourselves...That s not exclusive to children born into multiethnic families...our experiences are though, often particular.
For my part I cetainly have had to deal with and challenge institutionalised racism...however more personally, like you say, negoiate it as it comes out in our parents/familial relationships and examine it in the ways we all internalise it... amongst our own families, knowing the difference from what my parents experienced and internalised and who I am and what it is to be me.
Here is the quote I was referring to...
We have spent our own lifetimes, and many lifetimes before us, asserting our place in society as multiracial individuals.To be multiracial is to fully claim our complete and seemingly contradictory selves. We assert our multiracial status in order to reject the idea that we must renounce part of our own culture and heritage. What Dolezal has done, on the other hand, is to reject her culture and take on a different one.
We expand our multiracial and complex identities, while Dolezal abandons hers.
http://www.skirtcollective.com/the-mixed-race-communitys-response-to-rachel-dolezal/
...and I think that she would have been called 'self hating' , a fantascist, she'd be accused of 'passing'...if it were the other way around. As much as I hate that generalisation, that exists ...and it is probably why the detail is important to me.As for your story...depending on where we are born and in to which families it is not uncommon to some extent IME. I posted a link a few pages ago..I'll go get it...to a quote from a article written by someone who is mIxed/from a multiethic family who I think nails it...despite who our parents are or are not...we have and are ourselves...That s not exclusive to children born into multiethnic families...our experiences are though, often particular.
For my part I cetainly have had to deal with and challenge institutionalised racism...however more personally, like you say, negoiate it as it comes out in our parents/familial relationships and examine it in the ways we all internalise it... amongst our own families, knowing the difference from what my parents experienced and internalised and who I am and what it is to be me.
Here is the quote I was referring to...
We have spent our own lifetimes, and many lifetimes before us, asserting our place in society as multiracial individuals.To be multiracial is to fully claim our complete and seemingly contradictory selves. We assert our multiracial status in order to reject the idea that we must renounce part of our own culture and heritage. What Dolezal has done, on the other hand, is to reject her culture and take on a different one.
We expand our multiracial and complex identities, while Dolezal abandons hers.
http://www.skirtcollective.com/the-mixed-race-communitys-response-to-rachel-dolezal/
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8ball
Decolonise colons!
Treacle Toes
Time
That's a really effective way of putting that point - thanks for that.
Well I can't take the credit because I didn't write that article but she is spot on IMO and I wish I had wrote it because I feel the same way. She feels it, we feel it, we all know it/the details.
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ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Race isn't genetic. Race is as much a socially-constructed category (or to be more accurate a socially-constructed forever-changing, never-ending continuum of categories) as gender is. There's a vanishingly-small amount of genetic differentiation between so-called "races", and what little exists (predominantly predispositions to illness or protections against illness).
You're mistaking hereditary ethnic and broad biological factors for genetic differentiation. It barely exists, even nearly 70 years after Crick and Watson rode to glory after short-changing the role of Rosalind Franklin's x-ray crystallography in their "discovery" of the DNA double helix, and 5 generations of geneticists have had time and resources to research the subject of "genetic race".
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Well I can't take the credit because I didn't write that article but she is spot on IMO and I wish I had wrote it. She feels it, we feel it, we all know it/the details.
I guess I don't really agree with the 'there is no biological component' to race, though.
It's just that the second part of the sentence is all there is to it. It's a couple of differences in pigmentation, bone density etc. a generation or two and the differences quite literally fall to pieces when you mix them.
It's only because as a species we are so visually oriented that we even notice it, I think (I'm aware not everyone agrees with this). Pick up any two random people from the surface of the planet and only 4% of the genetic variation between them will be down to ethnic history, on average (citation needed, and it's from back when i was a student of genetics, but I've not heard of a revised figure).
Personal histories and stories are quite another matter, obviously.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Skin and eye-colour - factors that indicate ethnicity - are genetically-determined. "Race" certainly isn't. So-called "race" determinants bleed so heavily into one another across populations that "race" isn't a useful category in biology unless one explains exactly what they mean by "race" before using the term in their research, and even then the usage tends more toward manufactured or social categories not natural bio-genetic ones.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Isnt there more variation genetically between white people (and between black people too) than there are differences between 'the races?'
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Part of this is because what we call 'race' is based on just a few visual markers, and real human biodiversity doesn't follow the categories we have created, those categories being determined by Western history and modes of classification.
I work in the pharmaceutical industry and drugs are more and more often targeted and defined by differential racial responses, yet despite the vast sweep of human biodiversity being encompassed in African populations, investigations of drug effectiveness will be 'layered'* in terms of 'black' vs. 'non-black'.
You don't need to follow to science to untangle that one, just follow the money.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yeah, obviously there is. It's just that certain genetically determined traits are used as race markers while others aren't - and that's culturally determined. Lots of parts of the world have differences regionally due to nothing more than genetic drift. So you get a characteristic 'look' for large numbers of people from a particular area. There is a Scottish 'look' for instance that you see in a lot of Scots, due no doubt to nothing more than genetic drift, but probably just as genetically significant as other regional differences that get marked down as racial markers.
In our culture, we're still stuck in the shit of past racist (white, European mostly) racial theories. I reckon we'll get beyond that in a few generations' time, but only a couple of years ago I was translating a Spanish-language children's encyclopaedia in which it was stated that the black skin of Aboriginal Australians showed that they were related to Africans. My jaw hit the floor, and I'm sure it was just an ignorant non-scientist who wrote that, but still, certain racist racial assumptions are there, held no doubt often unconsciously.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
The question is whether their content is accurate, surely?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
There's more genetic variation between sub-Saharan West Africans than there is between the entire non-African population.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Yes, that's what I meant. Overall, grab two totally random people and 96% of variation has no connection whatsoever to what we call 'race'. And most of that 4% is actually down to neutral molecular changes (DNA has an alphabet that is basically bigger than than the number of words you can make, meaning often you can switch letters and the words are the same - geneticists use the number of letter substitutions to work out how far diverged populations have become, even where the real functional biological difference is nil).
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
And a huge amount of it is to do with religion and customs eg irish people, jews etc not being 'white' or russians/serbs etc being thought to be part of the same race because of their religion. Race is massively socially constructed and who's considered part of what race is often dictated by politics.
Treacle Toes
Time
I personally prefer to talk about 'ethnicity' and inherent differences... ( the quote I used was an American writer and as such the terminology/phrasing reflected that, although the meaning IMO is intact regardless....So yes I do think/know that there are 'ethnic' differences (obviously) in terms of our phenotypes and how mixing usefully messes and reinforms what is presumed about those differences.
Culture is quite another thing though...regardless of how we can generalise...Culture is fluid, and adoptable in ways that ethnicty is not.
Details, I love them.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
This does, however, depend entirely on which of the multiple meanings given to the term"race" is being used.
Of course even the pharma industry acknowledges that "racial response" to medications is a blunt instrument. IIRC there was a heart drug introduced in the late '90s that worked better in trials on African-Americans than on Euro-ancestry Americans, but it didn't work better "across the board" of Afro-Americans. It wasn't a "racial response" so much as a "subset of populations with African ancestry response", the two things being quite different, as your point about the vast sweep of human biodiversity makes clear.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I first heard of this last year. It's extraordinary really. The scientists involved must know that what they're doing isn't justified by the science.
Treacle Toes
Time
Which is pretty much why most people are giving RD the side eye
Let's narrow it down...she should, in her position, know better! With all she 'knows', has 'fought' against? How can I take her seriously? She clearly isn't taking me seriously with all those lies and manipulations.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Virtually every nutty wacko theory you care to concoct has been a popular belief among "race academics" at some time in the last two and a half centuries.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
But ironically enough, we're still kind of stuck with the racial categories that the wacko 'race academics' used in the 19th century.Virtually every nutty wacko theory you care to concoct has been a popular belief among "race academics" at some time in the last two and a half centuries.
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