Blog entry 9-22

Reading Taylor’s discussion of interstitial people coincided with a visit to Florida to visit my grandparents. The day I read the section about “illusions of purity”, my Grandfather renounced his Brazilian-ness.

“I am American, I have an American passport” he proclaims adamantly (in Portuguese nonetheless).

“I’m not Brazilian anymore.”

Taylor notes that identity is “dialectical”… constantly informed by interactions with others, with society.

I’ve noticed that for my grandfather, adopting the American way meant essentially assimilating to “white” America.

Taylor observes that, in Brazil, “marrying someone lighter is treated as a blessing for you and your progeny.” (144). My grandmother is a light, white Portuguese woman, while my grandfather used to be mistaken for mulatto.

Taylor notes that there is a “pro-white” colorist continuum and that “wealth and prestige can whiten” (144). Brazil, which rhetorically purports a more fluid model of racial-thinking still demonstrates hierarchy.  

Centuries of “social engineering” put whites on top. Even in Brazil, where an individual’s ethnicity is more dubious, and everyone is more or less a shade of brown, lightness is still equated with superiority and, like here in the United States, there are disproportionately more blacks living in extreme poverty than whites.  The darker you are, the poorer you are, and the less represented you are in media and government. It seems that even when everyone is mixed, a history of slavery informs attitudes about literal skin color.

Which brings me to a provocative question: if such dramatic racial stratifications (with whites consistently on top, and blacks consistently on the bottom) can be traced to origins of slavery, shouldn’t whites be enslaved for a period in order to achieve a more egalitarian society?

Ontologically subjective// epistemically objective.

If you’re thinkin’ bout my baby it don’t matter if you’re black or white”

-Michael Jackson being a little post-racial

               

 Taylor, in illustrating the metaphysics of race, uses the example of money, to demonstrate the way that race, like money, is ontologically subjective, and epistemically subjective. To quote him; “Just as institutional context turns a properly produced piece of paper—a paper with the right ancestry and appearance—into legal tender, institutional context turns a person with the right ancestry and appearance—the right causal history and physical features—into a member of, say, the Asian race” (111). This was a very helpful way to contextualize what the heck he meant by "ontologically subjective and epistemically objective." Those words stuck out to me as crucial in further comprehension of Taylor's race-talk. The money example was very helpful as well.   

According to Taylor, post-modern racialism, color-blind racism, and racial neoliberalism are all just different names for covering our eyes and claiming that we are past our egregious past. Claiming that the ills caused by racial thinking can be assuaged by moving forward, by being a “post racial” society, is an erroneous, eliminativist view. It doesn’t help to be “post-racial” (as an individual or a society) when the architecture of inequality is already in place.

Saying that we shouldn’t engage in race-thinking because race is a social construct is a dangerous line of thinking. Claiming that race is socially constructed does not undermine the power of this construction itself. Birdcages are birdcages, whether you believe in them or not. 

From where I'm standing

"Many people have wondered how I could stomach doing an interview with a man whose beliefs were so hostile toward people of my own race. Besides the fact that I erect a wall of professionalism when doing my job, there was nothing shocking about what he said. I knew that these were his beliefs. I'm often more taken aback by the subtle racist attitudes and suggestions when I don't expect it." 

- John Eligon on his New York Times interview with a white supremacist.

I remember, as a child, thinking about language. My mother taught me the Portuguese words for "water" and "cat", and I remember thinking that English was the main or principle language of the world. Every other language, in order to be understood, was to be translated from English. Since my standpoint was that of a native English speaker, I could not comprehend the starting point of someone whose native language was something other than English. I can't possibly understand  what it's like to occupy a different language as my native one. Just as I can't possibly understand what it is like to be born a different race.

"What is it like, you know, being black?" or "How does if feel to be white?" are not questions we can regularly ask each other. 

We censor our thoughts and questions too much. We're afraid of being wrong, of offending, of possessing incorrect or unpopular opinions. This is problematic because it breeds stagnancy of thought, and a table of friends (there is a recent Onion article that pokes fun at this http://www.theonion.com/articles/group-of-friends-engage-in-passionate-incoherent-d,33500/) who throw out buzzwords and collectively nod while discussing current events. It's wonderful to agree, to feel social affirmation, but it's even more wonderful to disagree, or even to examine why we might agree. Otherwise, our opinions stay the same. They are not shaped, only cycled through a process of affirmation, reaffirmation and shelving.

I feel as though white people in our society so quickly declare themselves "not racist" or "colorblind". This brings me back to John Eligon's point about his interview with Paul Craig Cobb. "Subtle racist attitudes and suggestions" seem to be the problematic product of the societal taboos we place around race topics. As long as we don't speak openly about these subjects, we are in danger of allowing social and systemic racism to pervade. I hope that, moving forward in this course we are able to speak candidly, and examine our own thoughts and experiences in relation to the topic.