I confess my white ass has a hard time understanding this post, since Michelle Obama seems kind of light, to me. But I suspect I'm just not calibrated to "the line" when it comes to light vs. dark skin re: black Americans.And then from TexasGirl:
I suspect pulling you guys out in block-quotes, isn't helping things. To the point about color, I think Amari gets it:@ Chet - I don't understand the post either. Sometimes I really feel white reading this blog.
No worries. We Black folk aren't calibrated either. Ask five different Black people their opinions of who's light versus who's dark, and you'll get five different answers. It's all relative, and, as I've also found, it's all relatives.
I find that folks who grew up around mostly dark-skinned people have a much lower bar for what constitues lightness. Many of my dark-skinned friends think I could easily trip over it, while I'd put myself firmly in a caramel category. On the other hand, my family is chock full of light-skinned folks, so I tend to err on the side of thinking someone is brown when browner folks would categorize them as light.
If that makes any sense at all.
Heh, like most things about human beings, it doesn't. I generally describe myself, to other black people, as "brown." But in my house (where everyone is darker than me) whenever I say this, I'm laughed at. Kenyatta insists that I'm yellow, or red at best, and she's now recruited Samori to her way of thinking. Meh, the perils of family.
Anyway, this isn't even taking into account the seasons when Negroes start changing color, and the fact that eyes are known to go from brown to gray. I've never actually witnessed that last point. I tend to think it's something that girls, back in high school, used to say to elevate themselves from nickel to dime-piece. It's right up there with "My great-grandmother was Cherokee." Whatever. Ain't no Cherokees in West Baltimore.
Where was I? Oh yes, the deeper point. One reason why I resist explaining too much in my post, is because I think it's a good thing for white people, who come here, to "feel really white," as TexasGirl says. I don't define that as "feeling guilty" or any of that business, so much as a nagging sense of having to work to get it. I imagine that many of my black readers have spent some of their lives feeling exactly that way, just in reverse. My first years working professionally made me immediately conscious that I was black, and that there were many people (in fact most people) in the world who were not.
I think we all need more of that in our lives. Here at this site, I try to present the black world as it is, or at least, as I see it. No frills. No translations. Just immersion. I was never the type to go to an island and lay up in a resort. Or go to Paris and eat at McDonald's. I want to see how other people talk, walk and live. I want to see our difference. It's the wierdest thing, but that's where I find the humanity--not in the sameness--but in the small details which I never would have imagined. I don't know how to explain it, but that's where I find unity. And that's what I try to give you here. Just black people as we are. Fucked-up and beautiful. No tourist trap, just the raw.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I hope nobody is demanding a translator. We're reading a blog written by TNC. If he's not like you or yours, you may have to hustle a little to keep up. That's the point, I thought.
I want to see how other people talk, walk and live. I want to see our difference. It's the wierdest thing, but that's where I find the humanity--not in the sameness--but in the small details which I never would have imagined.
this is why i lurk around these quarters...that and the injera references...
Man, you're back to writing nickle when you mean nickel. Why must you make me display my shameful past as a copy editor?
I think it's good for everybody to feel out of their depth from time to time. It promotes empathy for those who feel out of their depth most of the time.
Yeah, I feel really white here a lot of the time, but that's no reason not to come back (not saying that that's what your pull-quote commenters were saying; just making a general observation). The longer I stick around, the more likely I'll learn, right?
The only posts that really throw me are the music posts, because I kinda stopped listening to music in the early '90s, and the music I listened to before that is clearly not the music you were listening to.
That being said--I, too, don't think of Michelle Obama as being particularly dark. But then there aren't a lot of African-Americans whose color differential really registers much with me. I'm more likely to notice features than color.
All I see in Michelle Obama, though, is one drop-dead beautiful woman. Geez. She makes Jackie Kennedy look like yesterday's meatloaf.
I've just conceded that I am not going to understand the importance of the skin tone thing. As a white person, it was not even something I EVER knew was an issue in the black community until I was in college. I guess I should say I understand it, but I don't think I'd ever grasp what it means to a black person in their day to day life.
"Anyway, this isn't even taking into account the seasons when Negroes start changing color."
Wait, what?????
One reason why I resist explaining too much in my post, is because I think it's a good thing for white people, who come here, to "feel really white," as TexasGirl says.
That's one of the main reasons I come here every day, even if I don't post a comment. It's too easy for me as a white person to see the world only through my own privilege. That's why I love teaching where I do, even if I wish I had a better job--at least a third of my students in any given class are kids of color, many of them with English as a second language. I learn a ton from them even as I struggle with their essays, because I'm constantly reminded of the worlds out there that I can only enter vicariously, even if I go out and walk around in them.
I hope nobody is demanding a translator. We're reading a blog written by TNC. If he's not like you or yours, you may have to hustle a little to keep up. That's the point, I thought.
This. Why the hell would I come to a blog to listen to someone echo my own thoughts? I want to hear what other people have to say, especially when it's someone interesting and insightful.
Interestingly, though I am really white-- and this blog has made me feel really white sometimes-- I think I more often feel really rural.
I went to a 90% black elementary school in LA, and I remember clearly the skin color talk among my black friends. Damn I'd feel awkward when they'd start dissing someone behind their back because they were so dark.
Anyway, the truth is, we white people are way more sensitive to this, but only if the person in question is supposed to be white. The one-drop rule, right? My wife recalls a black co-worker once saying that in a black American family color can vary a lot, and relatively dark-skinned parents can have a light-skinned child or what have you. You could get a pretty white-looking child. And people just go with it, at least compared to the reaction if two white parents had a black-looking child.
My family is progressive but I'm sure if my daughter had come out looking like a black baby I'd have heard some surprise, to say the least.
Whatever, thanks, TNC, for the immersion experience. And damn, Michelle Obama is an amazingly beautiful woman.
I hope nobody is demanding a translator.
Not at all. Keep talking, folks; I'll get it eventually. I'm not asking for translation; just hoping to draw out more conversation.
Persia wrote:
This nails why I like it here. The conversation here is interesting and insightful without the personal attacks against dissenters.
May I just point out that white people also love claiming some native-american heritage?
I have been a long time lurker and have only posted a few times, but part of what I like about this site is that when you take the BSG issues and compare the slate comments and the ones on here we can really appreciate the attempt at a conversation. Here at least we have some dialogues going. Some overheated, some not, but all an attempt to talk.
Over at the slate piece we have a bunch of one shot posts yelling at the author (sadly, I was one of those).
Anyway, enough compliments. Damnitt you misspelled nickel!!!!
Agreed with the post overall but I just wanted to say-- it's absolutely worth trying (or at least going into) a McDonald's in a foreign country. You'll be amazed at all of the differences in this place that's supposed to be exactly the same no matter where you go! Teriyaki burgers in Japanese McDonalds, porridge in England... the intersection of cultures is pretty cool.
"I think it's a good thing for white people, who come here, to feel really white"
Yeah, this pretty much sums up the blog (and why I enjoy it). I'm feeling a new revised mission statement!
LOL @ "Ain't no cherokees in West Baltimore."
Oh my I hear that all the time in Oakland and I just sort of scratch my head. My people my people.
Oh, man, that's it! This got right to the heart of something I was never quite able to put my finger on. I spent a half a year studying in Senegal and naturally, it was a new experience for being white to be weird. (I'd occasionally find myself walking by a mirror and reflexively think, "hey look, a tubaab!" in that pre-conscious moment before I realized I was looking at myself.)
But when a white American friend's straight-out-of-the-60's parents came to visit and we were talking about this, her dad blurted an emphatic and vaguely spiteful "every white person should be forced to have this experience." I remember being put off by this, yet I couldn't put my finger on why.
I think you got it-- it's not about the guilt, it's the empathy. Going to Senegal wasn't self-flagellation or absolution, and I certainly didn't want to fool myself into thinking "I'm a white dude who got to spend a semester in Africa, so, like, black people love me." I was not gonna come home with white-boy dreads. What it was was a rare opportunity to take part in a black family, it was learning to be different, it was working to understand everyday things, it was learning the poetry of people in another language.
Last fall, my father was telling me how amazed he was that "that white guy" was able to keep up with all the black players on the U.S. Olympic basketball team. I was flummoxed for a few minutes before I realized he was talking about Jason Kidd.
Anyway, the truth is, we white people are way more sensitive to this, but only if the person in question is supposed to be white. The one-drop rule, right? My wife recalls a black co-worker once saying that in a black American family color can vary a lot, and relatively dark-skinned parents can have a light-skinned child or what have you. You could get a pretty white-looking child. And people just go with it, at least compared to the reaction if two white parents had a black-looking child.
This is because the American Black Community has been a multi-racial community from the first time the Slave Owner went down to the Slave Quarters.
On my mother's side: My grandmother was Black ' as the Ace of Spades'. My grandfather wouldn't have raised any eyebrows in the heart of Scotland or Wales (hair included - would not have been able to 'detect').
My grandmother's only wish with her 15 children was that they be born: ' Normal and Healthy', because the rest of a crapshoot.
She got children ranging from dark chocolate to my aunt, who could have ' passed' as a Red-headed White woman, and outside of their town, my grandmother was often ' mistaken' for her ' Mammy', not mother, but ' Mammy'.
As the Elders would say, ' you never know when a 'throwback' gene' was going to come into place.
I'll echo the people who appreciate the unfiltered posts. I'm in a bit of a weird spot because I currently live in Portland (the whitest major city in the U.S.), but growing up I always went to very diverse public schools. So I'm glad to have something to keep me thinking about these issues while I'm in a place that makes it all too easy to forget about them. Plus reading this blog has gotten me on a kick to learn about a lot of the hip-hop that I scorned back in the day.
Once again, thanks for all the good work you do, Ta-Nehisi.
Yeah, this blog makes me feel pretty white sometimes. which is saying something, as I'm chinese. :)
seriously, that is part of why i come here, too. what i learn from you, TNC, and the awesome conversators here. i'm all for no translation.
I don't know how to explain it, but that's where I find unity.
But you did say it, and well. I could not agree with you more. Seeing another person's humanity is not the same as seeing them as "the same" as you. It's about seeing them as they are -- in the raw, as you put it. I very much hope that all the talk of race, which Holder hopes America can get in to, is talk that pushes past the melting pot, eating culture, empty kumbaya-ness of most "diversity" training. A real conversation, one that takes all participants seriously, must create the kind of personal dislocation that leads to personal re-location that you speak of here.
"...talk that pushes past the melting pot, eating culture, empty kumbaya-ness of most "diversity" training."
Gawd, I hate that stuff. There's no humanity there. Just robots.
"Last fall, my father was telling me how amazed he was that "that white guy" was able to keep up with all the black players on the U.S. Olympic basketball team."
Damn, if he was amazed by one "white" guy, how did he feel about the gold medal game? Those white Spaniards were tough! I assume when you said last fall, you meant the Olympics?
Ah rikyrah, I can always count on you to sound like home - the last 4 generations of my family have had at least 2 throwbacks in them. My grandfather and aunt could be Jason Kidd's father and sister respectively, while my brother looks like B.I.G., and everyone else is just brown to yellah....you just never know
@ Jamilah
You got Indian in your family? lol.
Regarding the color issue, I'm surprised so many whites are unaware. Then again, maybe I'm not. As an olive-skinned, dark haired, swarthy, half-Jewish white man - I have gotten the "not like us" vibe from more "pure" white folks in my life. Not everyday, but often enough. Not having fair-skin, freckles, blond or sandy brown or even red-hair... you definitely feel it. A lot of us mongrels don't really feel like we fit in with the rest of the white folks, and it doesn't surprise me that many whites are unaware of these subtle cues.
As an old white guy I get to hear ideas and points of view here I'd be unlikely to cross upon in my daily world. As my brow wrinkles at artists I've never heard of, let alone heard, and WOW references my son has to explain for me...
@ Jonathan- of course!
Go rent or buy "Jackie's Back: A portrait of a diva." It's with Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Lewis where they claim that they are "1/4 Korean, 1/4 Hechipana Indian, and 1/2 black." You will think of many folks in Oakland when you watch that movie.
Why is is it that the "Native American ancestor" is always Cherokee? You'd think they were the horniest Indians on the continent.
Where was I? Oh yes, the deeper point. One reason why I resist explaining too much in my post, is because I think it's a good thing for white people, who come here, to "feel really white," as TexasGirl says.
I think there's value in this insofar as it relates to the ability to empathize and understand the Black experience (if you're intersted in the empathizing and understanding, that is).
Let's face it, Black people have far more occasion to be the only Black person in a room full of white folk, than vice versa. And as such, are far more likely to have experiences of feeling really Black, than whites are to have experiences feeling really white. So consider yourself lucky if the first time you do, it's on an Internet message board.
To my point, TNC, your comment about tanning reminded me of summer camp. My mother -- in an attempt to expand my world beyond the all Black public school experience that was my life nine months out of the year (and to give me the chance to flex my code switching muscles) -- sent me to all white summer camps that became my world for the other three months.
I didn't know nothin' about hegemony, power, privilege, and all that fun stuff back when I was 8. But I sure as hell knew something wasn't right about the times I found myself staring into a bunch of white faces, and being asked "Do Black people tan?" or to explain why I didn't wash my hair every day or to figure out whether or not it'd be okay to grant someone's request to touch my hair.
I have absolutely no problem with equitable cultural exchange as another way to build unity.(There is seriously a part of me that feels like Koreans and Black folks can solve all their beef if everyone sat down and woosahed over our mutual love for fried chicken. For reals. If you haven't tried Korean fried chicken, look into it). But I digress.
It's such a common experience for a lot of Black people who grew up straddling these worlds, that it's really become a joke amongst a lot of my friends who did. I'm just guessing, but I dare say there aren't too many white folks who've ever been asked to explain any aspect of their racial/ethinic identity to anyone.
I hope nobody is demanding a translator.
If there are more WoW posts I might want one.
Yes, that's one of the reasons why I like this blog quite a bit. TNC keeps things civil but frank. Also, he is humble yet opinionated --- if he has a position, he states it (and backs it up), but he starts off with the recognition that there are lots of thing he doesn't know about yet, or might be interested in/benefit from learning more about. In the blog atmosphere, the latter quality is as rare and welcome as a rainbow.
It's also interesting how it helps, being hidden behind the web --- we're all sitting here at our desks reading this stuff in our heads, in our Generic Internet Post voice, unaffected by many of the clues about age/gender/race that we would see immediately in real life and be stiffened by. From the white side of the fence I think sometimes it's hard to talk about racial/cultural differences because there's a fear on the white person's part that to express either ignorance or curiosity could be perceived as condescending, ad hoc anthropology.
Also, we're all really uptight.
My Frosh year of college I lived in the "African American Cultural Center" at my school (see BLACK DORM).
It was one of the most enriching experiences of my life, not because black culture was so foreign to me, but rather, it gave me the unique experience of having to be reminded daily that I was white on a campus that was overwhelmingly so.
As most college freshman do, I discussed this feeling endlessly with my black neighboors who echoed what TNC just wrote, "welcome to every day of being black in America." Living as a minority within a minority group threw everything I had experienced with regards to race on its ear.
As proof that fate does indeed have a rich sense of irony, the very same black students who felt the burden a being the lone (or one of a few) black representative(s) every day in class or on campus, would come home at night and use me as their "white represenative."
Though questions like, "why do white people wear shorts when it's 30 degrees outside" were more innocuous than, "how did your hair grow like that?" it gave me a perspective that would otherwise be impossible for a white kid who had never lived somewhere where he wasn't the majority. Someday, if I can find a talented ghostwriter, I'd like to write more thoughtfully about the experience.
Yeah, I learned a lot of cultural things that your average white kid wouldn't know and it does make picking certain things up on this blog easier. However, I felt the most growth not from learning why the girls on my floor wrapped their hair nightly, but from the small taste of
insecurity I felt knowing that for once, I was the cultural outsider within my own culture.
@alkali
The WoW posts are so incomprehensible to me that I don't even bother reading them. I probably need sensitivity training because I just don't feel the same need to find common ground with WoW nerds as I do with people of other races.
"From the white side of the fence I think sometimes it's hard to talk about racial/cultural differences because there's a fear on the white person's part that to express either ignorance or curiosity could be perceived as condescending, ad hoc anthropology."
I agree. But it seems that on these threads, everyone is at least granted the benefit of the doubt when it comes to these matters. As long as you're coming to the discussion in good faith, people are pretty understanding around these parts.
But I do have a quick question for all the beautiful black women on here. Why DO your hair appointments take all day?!
Kidding!
Here at this site, I try to present the black world as it is, or at least, as I see it. No frills. No translations. Just immersion. I was never the type to go to an island and lay up in a resort. Or go to Paris and eat at McDonald's. I want to see how other people talk, walk and live. I want to see our difference.
All well and good for the black world, but can we get a translator for the World of Warcraft?
@Stacy
You know you weren't kidding about the black hair. To make a long story short: CP Time is why it takes forever to do our hair.
"Anyway, this isn't even taking into account the seasons when Negroes start changing color."
Wait, what?????
@ OtherDan,
Black folks get darker in the sun, just like white folks do.
I guess I wasn't kidding about not understanding it completely, but I just figured it was a question that would't go over well!
CP Time? Does that stand for "Colored People's Time?" I have heard that one before. I'm pretty sure that goes onto the list of phrases I'll never use!
@stacy
Because my hairdresser works on three women at once! Seriously, you'll be sitting there with a head full of soap for half an hour. THEN you get the privilege of sitting under the dryer for a deep condition.)
Never took more than three hours for a press and curl, though.
I agree, Amari gets it. I often disagree with more brown folks on who is light skinned and who isnt--I would probably describe TNC as brown skinned also, compared to me anyway, a classic redbone.
As for the Native Am thing, whatever special it was on PBS where Henry Louis Gates was doing extensive genealogy on various Af. Am celebrities--he discovered many Black folk, even famous Black Indian folk like Chaka Khan, actually had mostly white and little to no Native American genetic markers. His theory was that Black folk were passing off traumatic (forced? rape) white ancestry as Native American out of the shame of having slave master blood ?(again? forced upon them), and as the oral histories were passed to generation to generation, later descendants were believing them uncritically / wholeheartedly. Perhaps Cherokee is cited often because of their profile--the written language, the diplomatic / political status, their domination of other smaller groups in the area, etc.
I found the whole discussion FASCINATING!
Why is is it that the "Native American ancestor" is always Cherokee? You'd think they were the horniest Indians on the continent.
I think that's probably because of the location of the Cherokee nation back in the day. Southeast. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee.
I actually had a Native American guy say to me once that every black person of descended from slaves probably has at least one Indian relative whether they look like it or not because runaway slaves were often given shelter by Indian tribes.
@jamilah
You know that's only part of the reason. Some of the other reasons are the breaks for "hot gossip" and the services rendered. For example, I don't like to get my hair blow dried so I end up sitting up the dryer for an hour just for my hair to dry. Also, most black hairdressers stack appointments which means they schedule appointments in unrealistic intervals for the services performed. This is acceptable to most black women because we know it going in and have done it all our lives. The places I went to that didn't stack appointment cost a lot more because they services less people in a day. So black women make a choice. Some women value their time, others value their money.
@Juba
Saw the same thing by Gates. EXCELLENT stuff. I think you're on to something with the Cherokee explanation.
I'd also recommend (if possible) Gates' recent documentary on Lincoln and the Civil War (debunking a TON of what we've always thought).
It was superb, and you haven't experienced awkwardness until you seen the Sons of the Confederacy honoring black descendants of black confederate soldiers.........
When I lived in New England, all the Native American folks I met (from the Wampanoag and Pequot tribes) looked like lighter-skinned black folks. The tour guide at the Pequot Museum sure did want to deny any intermixing with black folks when I asked him about it, however, despite the fact that no historical photos or depictions of Pequots in the Museum looked like him or any of the other present-day Pequots working there.
Daughter:
No, I understood the tanning part. I was just making fun of TNC's exact phrasing about "seasons," which made it sound like the leaves on the trees or something. I think he meant "in the summer."
It's nice to have a place to go and ask questions that are honest about cultural norms that are different from my own without being labelled as racist or bigoted.
I think there are two types of racism and they often get lumped together. There is a racism that comes from bigotry and a racism that comes from ignorance. This blog is a place where the ignorance factor can be corrected. I love this blog. In my head I think of it as one of those "Everything you always wanted to know about African-American Culture but were afraid to ask" type books. Sort of an Idiots Guide for White folk.
I am a white guy, not a frequent poster but daily reader for a year now. I find the frank and direct posts by TNC, and often the dialogue that results, have helped diffuse my default defensiveness when anyone is critiquing whites. And at the same time raised my sense of engagement in the analogue world and my accountability for my actions and thoughts etc.
And like TNC mentioned, that is not about guilt. It seems to be simply about honest learning.
Certainly in my adult life and even as a youth I have been exposed (not immersed) to may different peoples. What I am realizing, I guess, and it sounds simply cliche but, seems appropo, is that I like acknowledging the differences or even celebrating the differences which is different than 'celebrating diversity' somehow.
I don't have anything else to add other than, "This is why I love reading this blog." Some of it I get, some of it I don't. Some of it I laugh it; some I cringe at and some I just think is plain beautiful. I think we all (and should have?) those reactions to all cultures, races, religions. THAT's our common ground...there in the common reactions to our differences, and this blog's the garden to let that ground flower.
Keep confusing me TNC, and I'll keep trying to confuse you with SWPL and White Trash Picnic lingo.
Anyone who goes to Paris and eats at McDonald's deserves a bitchslap, period.
You want cultural differences? Go outside and try talking. Don't eat that crap. I was there for six months and didn't step foot into a fast food joint. I didn't miss it AT ALL. And now that I'm back (sigh) I have no desire to have fast food. I've broken the habit.
Hey! I got called up to the front of the blog! Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
I don't feel guilty for being white. It's just a fact. I feel like TNC said - I know I have to work a little harder to get it. And that's cool.
I've routinely put myself in situations where I've been a minority, including living and working in countries where my white skin made me stand out like a sore thumb and my Americanness made me a target of ire and fascination. I like that culture clash and like TNC said, it's where the humanity and unity can be found.
@ DB Cooper:
Not demand, but maybe request from time to time. I check teh Google when I don't understand something, but it's not always helpful for cultural and contextual issues. I hope it's okay to ask questions. I like to learn. And I hope that sometimes the questions provoke interesting conversations.
From C:
Yeah, that. In RL I am often afraid to ask because I don't want to create an uncomfortable situation or make anyone feel awkward. It's hard to have these discussions in such an open manner.
I love this blog. I don't know of any other place where racial and cultural issues can be discussed so frankly, and with such humor and intelligence. I really enjoy reading it. Thanks, TNC.
Anyone who goes to Paris and eats at McDonald's deserves a bitchslap, period.
But how else will I know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese?
I think "Colored people's time" is like "Jewish standard time" or "Gay standard time".
One fun social experiment would be to have a mixed party, call it for 7pm and see what time which people show up :-)
The only people at 7 will be the straight WASPs ;-)
Late to the conversation, but love the post and the comments. I am paler than pale and my wife is Thai. She and my daughter brown up beautifully in the sun and I somehow get paler. They laugh at me saying I look like a boiled chicken. As for the original post about Michelle I swoon as does my wife. It is the whole package - beauty to be sure, but also intelligence, accomplishments, demeanor, etc. I love it all.
Persia -- It's called a Royale with Cheese . . . because of the metric system. ;-)
"But how else will I know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese?"
Just watch Pulp Fiction. They explain it all.
"What's a Whopper called?"
"Don't know. Never went to Burger King."
Adina "The only people at 7 will be the straight WASPs ;-)"
Yes. We arrive early so we can start drinking.
I like coming here because it reminds me how ignorant I am. Like some of the other white posters here I spent time being the token white person. I worked for a company that was over 50% A-A employees. I was almost always the only woman in the room and often the only white person.
It was a useful way to spend a couple of years, but some nights I just needed to talk to another white person. That feeling, the wanting to talk to someone without doing an internal translation or editing conversation topics, is what provides the empathy for folks that are different.
I wonder the ration of readers on this blog that have spent meaningful time being "the token" vs. the percentage of the population that have been "the token".
funny. Even as a white mom of black kids (ok, BROWN, as they insist, and have since they were able to talk), I nicknamed them early on.
My eldest is my "pecan pie guy", my middle son is "chocolate caramel", and my daughter is "brownberry".
I wonder the ration of readers on this blog that have spent meaningful time being "the token" vs. the percentage of the population that have been "the token".
Now see, that would be an interesting T-N blog poll. I grew up as "the white kid" in my neighborhood and school (the family joke is that we were the only white folks who moved INTO town in 1968). Most of my pop cultural markers were black, to the point that when I entered a majority-white school, I could not tell the Stones and the Who apart, nor the Police and the Talking Heads. (Hey, whaddaya want, those white guys all sounded alike to me.)
And everyone touched and braided my hair. And asked what the black dots were in my eyes (pupils against the blue), and why I didn't get ashy. And were totally skeeved out by the network of blue veins showing through my skin.
There are ways that experience of being a minority hits me now every once in a while. Like with Obama, it struck me that, unlike many white folks, having a black guy in charge was not new to me. My grade school principal was a black guy, so were several teachers (including my awesome junior high math teacher), and of course there were my friends' dads. By the time I was ten years old, I was totally socialized to the experience of a black man in a position of power, authority, and respect. So now, my reaction is: "Yeah, that's the President speaking about the economy on the TV. Pass the chips."
@zacksback
totally hilarious!lmao! I can get so ashy that in college a boy I liked scratched "dry" on my arm. (Some of you might remember that commerical for lotion circa '86.)
For the record, your last paragraph is pretty much why I come here. I like the immersion, and yep, when I need translation, I listen for a while to figure it out.
Plus, you are kind. And hilarious. And a genius. That's also why I come here.
Yeah, that. In RL I am often afraid to ask because I don't want to create an uncomfortable situation or make anyone feel awkward. It's hard to have these discussions in such an open manner.
Yep...even when as a white person you start to think you have a clue about race, things can get tricky when you try to apply your newfound knowledge to other subcultures of the African diaspora. For example, a Brazilian I met vacationing in the US recently expressed surprise at the fact that Obama is considered black, since he has a white mother, as he said. So, I tried (rather ineptly, perhaps) to explain that here in the US we generally consider anyon
I witnessed a scene recently which drove home the point that skin tone is one of those topics which is totally ordinary for black people to talk about but still makes white people squirm--I was buying a coffee, and this burly white customer was chatting with the African-American barista, and asked her, "What happened to that big guy who used to work here?"
Barista: "Was he a light-skinned guy or a dark-skinned guy?"
Customer: "Uh... he was a black guy..." (shifting on his feet a little)
Barista: "Yeah, but was he light-skinned or dark-skinned? Did he look like me?"
Customer: "Uh... I... uh..."
I didn't envy him.
Yeah, that. In RL I am often afraid to ask because I don't want to create an uncomfortable situation or make anyone feel awkward. It's hard to have these discussions in such an open manner.
Yep...even when as a white person you start to think you have a clue about race here in the US, things can get tricky when you try to apply your knowledge to other cultures of the African diaspora. For example, a young Brazilian exchange student I met in the US recently expressed surprise at the fact that Obama is considered black, since he has a white mother. So, I tried (rather ineptly, perhaps) to explain how in our country we have historically expected a person to choose(or have chosen for them, as the case may be)one color and culture or the other- black or white, etc. And the traditional concept of one Afro trait equaling 'black'. Well, about 2 minutes after I opened my mouth I realized that it was probably occuring to him for the very first time that in our country he himself would be considered black; that maybe I considered him to be black. He became really suddenly very quiet, when fortunately his girlfriend jumped in and changed the subject. No, I'd like to believe this wasn't a case of internalized racism, but rather a discomfort with the strict nature of our categories. Frankly, I felt a little embarassed having attempted to explain it at all.
I've been living in Korea for a good long time now and while I'm sure that's a good bit different than being a black person in America I'm sure there are at least some commonalities. For example most Koreans don't know much about whitey besides what they see on TV and pretty much the only real way to fix this is to have them spend some time around foreigners. But its very hard for a Korean to try to spend time with foreigners without coming across as condescending / needy / tokenism / looking for free English lessons.
Overall a lot of the racism I run into is positive (yay! white priviledge works all over the world!) but I'm a bit worried for my half-Korean son. But I guess with how insanely fast he's growing he won't have to worry about bullies too much :)
Wait, I need some clarification here. Is it possible I'm not actually part Cherokee (the other parts being, to the best of my knowledge, all Western European in point of departure for the US)?
WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE TRYING TO ROB ME OF THE PHANTASMIC HERITAGE WHICH IS MY BIRTHRIGHT FROM MY CRAZY BUT OTHERWISE COMPLETELY UNINTERESTING FAMILY?
What a wonderful discussion. I watched at work yesterday. I never quite understood the frustration of not understanding cultural, well habits isn't quite the right word but it'll do for now, until this. My firm has many Asians, both lawyers and staff. We had a discussion about skin tone in the black community. The upshot from the discussion from my colleagues was that noting skin tone was silly. My boss, an Asian woman, said some Asians do what others consider silly too and pulled out of her purse this pokey thing and strips of tape. Apparently, it was a simple device to make "double eyelids." Tape is put on the lid, the pokey thing...well...pokes above the eyeball to create another lid and the tape secures it. I was gobsmacked. "Why on earth would you do something silly like that?" I asked. "Your eyes are lovely." She told me just about every Asian woman at least around me does this in the morning. I had no clue.
@Hicks
Interesting observation...i've heard of such surgery correcting "double" eyelids in Korea...also, there's a somewhat disturbing convergence between skintone and racial hierarchy in east-asia, both in indian culture, but also in indo-china. Don't want to make mountains out of molehills, but i've had discussions about black skintone with ethiopian/eritrean friends. And i see similarities with what people have discussed here.
@ Bruce,
Oh lord, have you seen Mississippi Masala? At one point, Sarita Chaudhuri speaks the truth of the Indian subcontinent: "You can be fair and have no money, or you can be dark and have money, but you cannot be dark and have no money." She's talking about marriage prospects for women, but you can apply that statement to pretty much all social life. Have you seen ads for marriages among South Asian immigrants? "Green card, fair skin."
Can you tell that I'm dark and have no money?!
This is why I read this blog.
@maya...no can't say i have. But your point is taken. Also, there's the correlation between the caste-system in indian tradition, and the fixation with skin-tones. The word for caste in sanscrit litteraly means "color"...
i would welcome you to the club, but i've been given the fairer skin of my mothers side...
"Anyway, this isn't even taking into account the seasons when Negroes start changing color."
Example - back in Gulf I my unit deployed from Germany. After the drive-by was over we sat around and had nothing to do but play sports and take naps. Lots of people had all been the same shade in Germany, but in Saudi under some real sunlight they began to differentiate. Lots of jabs about whose grandmother had worked in the big house and so on.
Whites certainly have fine-tuned awarenesses about skin tone - the double meaning of the word "fair" goes way back before coming to America - and about hair color on top of that. One little blond head in the litter can earn a wife all kinds of unkind comments, even if it's because an ancestor was from Venice or wherever.
"I actually had a Native American guy say to me once that every black person of descended from slaves probably has at least one Indian relative whether they look like it or not because runaway slaves were often given shelter by Indian tribes."
Yes. Various nations also sold slaves to the English - native and African and European - that they had either taken in raids or bought further up the line. The plantations were intially started with whites, because that was what they had intially and because they were much cheaper, under the euphemism "indentured servant". Indenture was typically either forced on a vagrant or sometimes people were just "transported" from England or Ireland. This realy got going in the 1700s when lots of peasants began to be displaced and there were lots of paupers and vagrants. It was almost always a life term; almost no one lived out an indenture which could be extended indefinitely by various tricks.
This mixture has left its marks in some aspects of Black American English. (That's just the formal name linguists use.)
Back on topic - this blog is great because all the customary rules that have grown up around race are disabled here.
A lot of white people of French or Spanish ancestry do have Native American ancestors as well. Not Cherokee in particular, but this is really pretty common. My understanding is that settlers from the British isles sent whole families to the New World, but the French and the Spanish mostly just sent men. If those men wanted female companionship, they had to look outside their own group.
Of course, plenty of descendants of such unions aren't considered white at all nowadays. But plenty more are just white people who tan rather well. (Some that I know get taken for Jewish or Greek.) I don't think there was ever a one-drop rule for Native American ancestry.
The same thing seems to have happened with French/Black and Spanish/Black, giving rise to endless discussions of how to count Dominicans.
Vine Deloria is turning over in his grave - but probably in a good way. He pointed out 40 years ago that it's uncanny how whites, in claiming Indian ancestry, always claim Cherokee and always a woman. The woman part is pretty obvious - the Cherokee, as I recall, in his understanding was because they were one of the "civilized" tribes. And let's face it - the name sounds pretty cool.
"My understanding is that settlers from the British isles sent whole families to the New World, "
That's true for the New England and Middle Atlantic colonies and partially true further south. In Georgia and that area the socieites were so analogious that englsih and american families intermaried and in some cases land pased into English families along with American spouses.
In New York the Five Nations and English lived side by side in lots of places, most of the time at the sufferance of the Five nations, who at least up until the so-called French and Indian War were the undisputed and invincible military machine on that part of the continent. Its hard to trace the intermarriages though because the Iroquois often took English names when dealing with them. (Iroquois names are huge, long polysyllabic affairs and the English had a hell of time dealing with them.)
New England was differet. For Calvinsts the Indians were hopeless reprobates. No intermarriage, no cooperation, especially after "King Philip's War."
@ Bruce: What did your eritrean and ethiopian friends say about skin tones? Are they american born? It's of interest to me because I'm eritrean-canadian and sometime cringe at the older generation's unenlightened attitudes about race and color.
I was stunned the first time someone called me light skinned.
My color scale is clearly based on my biases.
I've never met anyone from Maine who claimed Cherokee ancestry. Must depend on where people are from. If you're dealing with the southeastern and middle parts of the country, I suppose that all makes more sense. But my frame of reference is more around the edges, where different Native American groups (as well as different white settler groups) have predominated.
To get back to the white/black discussion, though... this may be an odd question, but to what extent does skin color snobbery (or partisanship) among black people correspond to all the various snobberies and partisanships that white people have about which bit of The Old Country grandpa came from? I don't think there's a clear skin color snobbery continuum among white people -- some of the groups with the palest skin have had very low status. But I do know that every white kid in my grade school could recite in detail which parts of his family were Irish, Portuguese, Danish, or even Syrian or Armenian. The obsession was more about names and rituals than looks, though.
the various snobberies and partisanships that white people have about which bit of The Old Country grandpa came from?
I dunno... I think a lot of white people, if their families have been in this country for several generations, really don't know much about where they came from, or at least may not know any more than a country and maybe an interesting story or two that are passed down.
I know that's largely the case for me (I'm white). I do know how my background is split (3/8 Irish, 1/4 Italian, 1/8 each English, German, and Swiss), but I don't know much of anything beyond that aside from anecdotes about playing banjoes up the Mississippi and such. The big exception is one branch of my family that can be traced back to a loyalist brother of Ben Franklin who moved to Canada, but that's the only branch for which I know of any documentation at all.
(Though, as a white American posting on a black American's blog, I'm aware that even that's a lot more knowledge of my family's old-world history than most African-Americans have, for obvious reasons.)
Most of my friends have been pretty much the same. "I think I had a Lithuanian great-grandfather." "We're all Irish. "I think there's some French and Swedish in there." That sort of thing. But then, I never knew any blue-bloods.
Also note, if you look deep into the Census files, the large number of people identifying their ancestry as simply "American" instead of a particular country in the Old World.
The people simply claiming "American" tend to be English. That's not only due to the lapse of time, but also to the need for distance after the Revolution. "The ethnicity that dare not say its name." They don't feel any connection or see any similarity between themselves and British people, and just looking on the surface they are right.
the various snobberies and partisanships that white people have about which bit of The Old Country grandpa came from?
I can give you another variant of this. One of my undergrad professors, Norman Cantor, wrote a very controversial work of medieval historiography called "Inventing the Middle Ages," in which he was...less than kind to some of the giants of the field, notably some of the early 20th-century German Jews.
A couple of years later, a grad school professor of mine observed that he'd always thought the book was "the product of the traditional resentment of the Eastern European Jew for the German Jew."
Whether it was or not, I learned that this was a real phenomenon. German Jews tend to think they're "better" than those of us from the Pale.
I was reminded of this while reading Gitta Sereny's wrenching book Into that darkness, for which she spent untold hours interviewing Franz Stangl, commandant of one of the Nazi extermination camps, as well as survivors of that camp. One of her interviewees was a man who had worked the train depot, processing the arriving prisoners. He--a German Jew--talked of how disgusted he and his fellow workers were when there were no more of the posh German Jews to be processed, and the shipments of Jews from the east began. Instead of furs and jewels, these Jews had clothes that were tattered and crawling with lice, and these inmate-bureaucrats hated them for it.
Every group has its castes, doesn't it?
"Inventing the Middle Ages" was awesome.
I heard somewhere that it was German Jews already in established in the US that invented the term "k*ke" for all the Eastern European Jews swarming through Ellis Island. Just lovley.
There certainly are castes. German Jews formed some of the original upper crust in San Francisco from the Gold Rush on.
"As for the Native Am thing, whatever special it was on PBS where Henry Louis Gates was doing extensive genealogy on various Af. Am celebrities--he discovered many Black folk, even famous Black Indian folk like Chaka Khan, actually had mostly white and little to no Native American genetic markers. His theory was that Black folk were passing off traumatic (forced? rape) white ancestry as Native American out of the shame of having slave master blood ?(again? forced upon them), and as the oral histories were passed to generation to generation, later descendants were believing them uncritically / wholeheartedly. Perhaps Cherokee is cited often because of their profile--the written language, the diplomatic / political status, their domination of other smaller groups in the area, etc."
I remember a black neighbor at MSU saying that, yeah, they had white ancestors in his family from slavery, "But we don't claim them."
One of the ways the Five Civilized Tribes were considered civilized when that moniker was made up was that they kept black slaves, except maybe the Seminoles?
I think Cherokee also just rolls off the tongue better than Ojibwa or Pottawatomi.
@ Sophia
Most of them are born in eritrea/ethiopia and now live, like me in sweden, and most of them are as you are, appauled by the attitudes of the older generation. I've also felt a similar disgust for my own people's (persian) unenlightened views on race/skin color. But then again, shit changes, we move forward!
I am an avid lurker, and I truly enjoy reading the opinions here. Smart, thoughtful or crazy...its some good stuff.
"His theory was that Black folk were passing off traumatic (forced? rape) white ancestry as Native American out of the shame of having slave master blood ?(again? forced upon them), "
Or it was white slave blood and the trauma of white slave children being free and thiers not, and of further centuries of slavery entrenching a color caste line, and of segregation, was enough to make them disown ancestry they weren't really aloowed to claim anyway.
"I think Cherokee also just rolls off the tongue better than Ojibwa or Pottawatomi. "
That and the fact that those tribes were hundreds of miles away to the north, and it was mostly French Canadians and them marrying.
"One of the ways the Five Civilized Tribes were considered civilized when that moniker was made up was that they kept black slaves, "
That has to be a big part of if, but it wasn't sufficient, or the same white society would have labeled the Tlingit civilized. I think the class system in general, and the farming techniques and so on that they shared with the English may have had a lot to do with it.
The Cherokee really did intermarry a lot. But their reputation as assimilationists also meant that they got used as a stand-in ethnicity by amateur genealogists. I'm pretty sure the mirror image also happened in which black ancestry became "Cherokee" in white families.
My family claims Cherokee ancestry too. I'm pretty suspicious of it, though it's not implausible. I suspect that most white Americans of Anglo or Scots-Irish descent have some American Indian ancestry, but that their ability to know exactly how much and what group is not great. Family genealogy in America is often heavily fortified with standard myths--the Three Immigrant Brothers who founded the family branches, the Cherokee Princess, etc.
I claimed "American" ethnicity on the census because my European ancestry is so nationally mixed that it would have been hard to describe in the space available, and I don't strongly identify with it. I later learned via Nate Silver's statistical work that a lot of the people answering "American" probably had bigoted attitudes about race and ethnicity, and were claiming some sort of primacy, and I got kind of embarrassed.
Look - all of this Cherokee business is not logical and doesn't necessarily make people look good. To quote Deloria from 1969: "Whites claiming Indian blood generally tend to reinforce mythical beliefs about Indians. All but one person I met who claimed Indian blood claimed it on their grandmother's side." And "Cherokee was their most popular choice." I remembered this vividly because I found it remarkable how often other white people I knew claiming Indian ancestry had a Cherokee grandmother. And then of course there was that hideous Cher song. I would call it a subconscious meme, if I was sure exactly what that meant.