Thoughts about trans-racialism

When people ask me what I am, my response is "whatever the LAPD, or the NYPD calls me", the point is that race is a social construct; meaning it's only use is social.

It's kind of like the idea of Nobility, if everyone thinks thinks you are nobility, you're nobility; if you say your nobility, unless people believe you, you're not.

However, when it's accepted that there is such a thing as nobility, and then certain assumptions are taken with that, someone could claim to be nobility (which basically means that he is claiming that people call him nobility), even though he is not recognized as such. When he's claiming to be nobility, even though he may feel "noble", there are assumptions that other people (rightly) have, one is that this person is recognized by other nobility, that they have access to wealth, grew up a certain way, and so on.

It's the same thing with being "black", you're black if people consider you black in the relevant context, if the community your a part of puts you in that category.

A person from Somalia growing up in the US might just be categorized as black, had he grown up in another society he may have been categorized as Muslim, or Somali.

Here's the point. Race is not something you are, it's something societies (sometimes) categorize people as.

You go back 2000 years "black" or "white" weren't categories that were relevant, there's nothing innate about race, nor is it a chosen idenity.

I don't choose how people see me, I'm mixed and what people consider me depends on the context, I grew up in a certain culture which makes me identified (by my mannerisms accent and such) with that culture, had I grown up in another I would be identified as something else, it's not up to me it's contingent.

Had I began to act as though I were something else (meaning I would pretend I had grown up a certain way and pretend that I was seen a certain way), no matter how I feel about who I am, I would be deceiving other people, plain and simple.

Rachel Dolezal has to lie about her past and how she was viewed by society, that isn't trans anything, and it certainly isn't equivalent to trans-sexuality; it's just deceit.

That's my opinion anyway.

There's this, which I found interesting -
The Heart of Whiteness: Ijeoma Oluo Interviews Rachel Dolezal, the White Woman Who Identifies as Black
http://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/04/19/25082450/the-heart-of-whiteness-ijeoma-oluo-interviews-rachel-dolezal-the-white-woman-who-identifies-as-black

You can immerse yourself in a culture you weren't raised in, learn the language if it is not your primary language, learn about it's history, appreciate it's art and music but you can do all these things without appropriating it as your own. I don't really understand what her motivations were but she's not transracial, she's just faking being an African-American woman.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/15/jenner-dolezal-one-trans-good-other-not-so-much

I liked this Adolph Reed article on the subject.

But the more serious charge is the moral one, that, as Michelle Garcia puts it, "It’s pretty clear: Dolezal has lied." But here too, it’s not clear what’s so clear. Is the point supposed to be that Dolezal is lying when she says she identifies as black? Or is it that being black has nothing to do with how you identify? The problem with the first claim is obvious – how do they know? And on what grounds does Jenner get to be telling the truth and Dolezal not? But the problem with the second claim is even more obvious since if you think there’s some biological fact of the matter about what race people actually belong to utterly independent of what race they think they belong to, you’re committed to a view of racial difference as biologically definitive in a way that’s even deeper than sexual difference.

Not really new, is it? ...i've met a lot of white rastas and white indians (of the hare krishna not American sort but even then history is replete of those too ...grey owl being the most reknown)

Nothing wrong about adopting cultural identities is there? Jeez...How many Irish and Scots descendants still wear the kilt and play the bagpipes and do the dancing as if they never left the home countires hundreds of years ago.

Oh Yeah, but that's different, a white guy becoming a rasta, or something like that is adopting a culture, that's fine; but he isn't presenting himself in a way that would imply he had a different experience than he had.

In otherwords he doesn't have to hide his parents.

sam bauer #7

‘You don't think cultural appropriation is wrong? What about black face?’

Good questions. Context and power relationships are important.

‘Black face’ is usually taken as disrespect to black people due to its minstrel show history.
Some folk wishing to be ‘Scots’ could be seen as a kind of complement - again due to an interpretation of history. When a small boy I wanted to grow up to be an Apache. If people shout, “Geronimo!” when they jump out of an aeroplane, etc., are they being disrespectful or paying an indirect complement?

Black face is not Cultural appropriation ... it's mocking a Group of People using racist stereotypes ....

Cultural appropriation is impossible to avoid ... no one "owns" culture ... of course unless you're a fascist who believes that culture is somehow the property of a nation or ethnicity.

Also it isn't "culture'" which are oppressive or dominant, it's classes and money.

There’s a world of difference between putting on a kilt or listening to the Dropkick Murphys and the kind of blackface/cultural appropriation Dolezal has done, a lie which she built her profession on.

For one thing, Irish American identity is an actual thing, it’s an immigrant identity which has it’s roots in Irish refugees fleeing over here from persecution by the English. I don’t live in America but where I live Irish cultural identity is very strong, 40% of Quebeckers have Irish ancestry, it’s one of the reasons why Quebec culture is so different from French culture (from France.) Similarly, a lot of the Scots Canadians here trace their ancestry back to fleeing English persecution after the failed Jacobean rebellion. It’s not unusual for people to retain parts of their cultural traditions, especially when ancestors were compelled to leave their homes by forces of oppression. Clearly Irish and Scottish people have moved here after the original settlers who fled the English crown but nobody’s faking being part of a marginalized identity in order to gain sympathy and money in the same way as Dolezal has done. Oddly enough though, as an English person in Quebec, I wouldn’t dream of pretending to be Irish, I would feel that to be entirely inappropriate.

Just because it’s “not new” doesn’t make it OK now. Grey Owl is an icon, amongst British people, he largely has a legacy amongst Canadian native people as another in a long line of white folks appropriating their culture and propagating noble savage stereotypes. Archie Belaney could have advocated for the Canadian wilderness without dying his skin with tea bags. It’s no different from the current controversy about Joseph Boyden, a prize winning novelist who has been claiming (non-existent) Ojibway heritage, while Canadian First nations have been objecting to his stories which traffics in stereotypical portrayals of indigenous men and women for years (while at the same time native writers struggle to find a platform of their own.)

There’s a whole world of difference between aculturation , when cultural traits are adopted into a different groups. ie the Irish influence on Quebec music, or cultural appreciation, ie my undying love of the Wu Tang Clan, and cultural appropriation, in which people profit from taking somebody else’s identity, expressly against their wishes. In Dolezal’s case, she’s a white woman from Montana who literally got a job as a spokesperson for black people. On the other hand, nothing new at all.

A Mohawk writer’s opinion on Grey Owl and other aboriginal impersonators.
http://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/doug-george-kanentiio-impersonators-have-caused-aboriginal-people-great-harm

Auld-Bod

I've no idea if shouting "Geronimo" is perceived as an insult, and if it is it's probably much less of an insult than the way his grave was desecrated and his scull stolen but this is a very interesting book, which amongst other things discusses the use by the US military of native names and symbols, ie Apache helicopters, officially designating hostile grounds (eg Afghanistan) "Indian Country."
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20588662-an-indigenous-peoples-history-of-the-united-states
Also, the National Congress of American Indians lodged a complaint about the military operation to kill Bin Laden being called Operation Geronimo.

sam bauer

If the culture is a minority and they feel it is being appropriated in a negative way it becomes a problem. In this example, if native americans view it as disrespectful it becomes a problem right? Is it not as simple as that?

I don't think it is at all ... cultures don't dominate, classes and institutions do. I don't think it's smart to try and shift over the Language of domination to symbolic cultural issues.

Look; when Rich kids listen to punk Music, it's Cultural appropriation (working class culture being taken by the upper class).

But that isn't a problem, that isn't oppression, what's oppression is what makes the working class stuck in poverty.

I think her reasoning for doing it in the first place is interesting. As I recall she attended a majority African American university and felt that she was being sidelined or ignored or something due to her race. Once she 'transitioned', her thoughts and ideas seem to have then been accepted by the black community based on the positions she came to hold within it afterwards.

I would like to know if the content of her thought changed simultaneously with her 'race' or if it remained consistent throughout. If its the former then you could probably just chalk it up to simple career maneuvering on her part. However if its the latter I think that would say something significant about the limitations of identity in politics.

Cultures don't exist as something separate from classes and institutions. The white, anglo cultural hegemony imposed on native people didn't just happen, it was a carefully orchestrated act of literal and cultural genocide, using institutions such as the military and education and forced appropriation of land for the capitalist class to exploit and to appease the working classes by giving out land, in the form of the homesteading movement etc.

It's really simple, if someone tells you that something you are doing is disrespectful and hurtful to them, especially within a context have been a historically oppressed, it's at the very least nothing more complicated than courtesy and politeness to at least give it some consideration when they ask that you stop. To dismiss people's objections to what is received by them as a racist insult on the grounds that it's something which as always happened or that it's really class we should be really worried about, it's pretty damned insulting. It's up to the person on the receiving end of racism to decide whether it's racist or not, not the person dishing it out.

As for rich kids liking punk, that's not cultural appropriation, punk isn't a cultural identity, it's just a musical genre.

Musical genres exist separately from culture? Can you explain where culture ends and where it begins?

Musical genres exist separately from culture?

No, obviously it's a part of culture. I was responding to the absurdity of suggesting that rich people liking punk was in any way comparable to the kind of cultural appropriation that marginalized people have so often complained about being racist. Like suck it up kid, it's fine for people to continuously insult you in a racist way after many, many requests to stop it because some geezer in Chelsea has a large collection of Subhumans records on vinyl.

It wasn't me suggesting that cultures and institutions exist separately, it was Rommon -

cultures don't dominate, classes and institutions do.

My point was that cultures do dominate ie English speaking culture in Canada and the US and they do dominate because institutions and classes enforce this.

I see. I guess I thought their point was that culture has the effect of coming in after the fact to normalize what has already been put into action by classes and institutions. Not that it was necessarily a separate force.

The white identity for instance came into being following the combined efforts of african slaves and european indentured servants to overthrow early colonial governments here in north america. The actions of classes and institutions engineered the resulting divide between those two groups artificially via the legal system. The cultural norms which then reinforced those ideas of separation for each group only developed after the fact.

We forgot to mention Senator Elizabeth Warren and her claim to be Cherokee.

Was it simply a family myth she repeated or was she purposefully using it to acquire extra street-cred. Yes, motive and context is everything.

Of those Scots and Irish heritage mentioned, many were presbyterian Scotch-Irish (originally Scots Border reivers transplanted to Ulster by James VI) who were the earlier emigrants to the USA, not the later Irish potato famine emigrants. It may be urban legend but i heard that the term hillbilly came from those Scotch-Irish singing folk songs about William of Orange - King Billy.

And apologies, fleur, but i think you have absorbed some of the romanticism about Scot exiles.

Most Scots emigrants were sent to the colonies by their own clan chiefs and not by any invading English( who were ably assisted by the Scots lowlanders in the Jacobite war, btw). The Highland Clearances were a later development.

All I'm saying is that sometimes dogma needs to take second place to the objections of people who feel oppressed by certain behaviours, even if those actions are not meant maliciously. If someone has been subjected to racism, for generations, we owe them the courtesy of taking their point of view into consideration when they ask people to desist from a certain action which they feel is racist. They're the better judge of what is racist than the person carrying out this action. Race is a social construct but if you've been subjected to racism your entire life, that's probably not a particularly useful sentiment.

An example, which has nothing to do with race but something from my own life. Sometimes people are hurtful and undermine other people with no malicious intent and don't even know they are doing it. I have a non-binary trans co-worker who uses the pronoun "they" and a shortened, gender neutral version of their birth name. They hate being referred to by their full name, it really upsets them. I have another co-worker, who is a really decent and lovely guy, who kept calling them by the full birth name. I had a little word with him and he was mortified that he had upset our co-worker, he had no idea he had upset them and stopped immediately. It's not always done with malice, sometimes people don't realize they're oppressing someone with their words or actions but if someone asks you to cut it out, don't dismiss it out of hand.

Whatever, it doesn't make make putting on a kilt on Burns Night in any way comparable to blackface. fwiw, nearly all the Irish immigrants to Quebec in the nineteenth century were descendants of the survivors of the coffin ships, there's a mass grave a couple of miles from where I am now of about 6000 of the unlucky ones who died from typhus in fever sheds on landing here.

Fleur I don't disagree with your sentiment but I think I take issue with your reasoning. Nobody owes anyone anything. I don't oppose racism because it's morally wrong I oppose it because it's false and acts as a means of control. I would never strive to be disrespectful to anyone due to my own personal nature but it feels as if you are the one who might be raising this ideal into a self-evident point of dogma.

Good posts Fleur.

I’ve found all these posts interesting as some of this identity stuff is jumbled up.
In the early 1970s an apprentice I worked with had just been over to Northern Ireland for the 12th July celebrations. He told me a number of American lodges had come over for the walk. One was comprised of Native Americans who wore traditional clothes under their orange sashes.

recuperation

The white identity for instance came into being following the combined efforts of african slaves and european indentured servants to overthrow early colonial governments here in north america.

This is certainly true. However there was a heavily stratified class system imported to the Americas from Britain, right from the very start of colonization, despite American mythology about equality etc, and as such was a class system which was manipulated by the ruling classes to enforce white supremacy, ie the lowliest of white person could still be further up the hierarchy than ay POC on the continent, even at times when that would not be in their own class interests.

recuperation

Nobody owes anyone anything.

Sorry mate but yes we do. We owe people dignity and respect, until such a time they prove themselves unworthy of it. It is the very least we can do as human beings is to treat each other with empathy. Sometimes people turnout to be asses and reserve my right to withdraw that empathy if I think they don't deserve it - and I've developed a very low tolerance for people who annoy me these days - if we can't take care of each other, then there really isn't much point. If my dogma is to defer to marginalized people when they say something is abusive, I don't have a problem with that.

Auld-Bod

One was comprised of Native Americans who wore traditional clothes under their orange sashes.

That's weird! On the other hand, I've just come with a hair breath's of committing to do a masters degree, part of which would have involved an all expenses paid two weeks in Dublin. I've been second guessing my motivations about that. Maybe it was the free trip.....

To owe something to someone in this basis assumes the existence of a score keeper. That certainly can't be a human as this entity would need to be objective (not to mention immortal and all-seeing) which a human could never be. So at this point you are essentially relying on a cosmic being for this score keeping. Which might very well be that case for you but unless you can prove its existence this brings us to a stopping point which we cannot overcome.

As for whiteness it wasn't something that existed here initially but you're spot on with the class system imported from europe. The first slaves in north america could own property, make use of the legal system, mingle with europeans and even buy their freedom. They and the indentured servants were essentially of the same class at that point. Only their eventual cooperation in opposition to colonial governments made the creation of race as a means of separation a necessity for those governments and their successors.

To owe something to someone in this basis assumes the existence of a score keeper. That certainly can't be a human as this entity would need to be objective (not to mention immortal and all-seeing) which a human could never be. So at this point you are essentially relying on a cosmic being for this score keeping.

Nobody's keeping score. It's called having a little courtesy.It goes a long way.

The first slaves in north america could own property, make use of the legal system, mingle with europeans and even buy their freedom

By the 1650s with the Slave codes in Virginia, slaves had no rights whatsoever and the bulk of chattel slavery happened after this.

Courtesy is completely subjective. What is courteous in one place is incredibly rude somewhere else. That's not a solid basis to act from.

The Virginia slave codes were enacted in 1705 and explicitly set the basis for what would become the system of racial supremacy, a new idea altogether. But this was in response to things like Bacon's rebellion. These laws are the artificial basis on which the "organic" cultural norms of racial supremacy were based on. The actions of classes and institutions preceded the actions of culture which had to have their conditions created in the first place before they could take hold. The indentured servants did not voluntarily separate themselves, they had to be forced via a legal system. Only later did it appear to be their voluntary actions which led to that continued separation.

Courtesy is completely subjective. What is courteous in one place is incredibly rude somewhere else. That's not a solid basis to act from.

Unless you're in a completely foreign culture, what is courteous or not is easy to know. You may not like the word, so what about settling for "treating everyone like human beings"?

The first of the Virginia slave codes were enacted into law in the 1650s, before the Bacon rebellion. Although it is true that Bacon's rebellion was an uprising which involved people of all races, slaves and indentured servants alike, it was not exactly a liberation movement. Bacon himself was a wealthy landowner with an immense personal, political rivalry between himself and the Virginia governor and the rebellion was in essence about demands that landowners be allowed to native people from their lands and settle them. The rebellion's manifesto proposed the extermination of all indigenous people. The motivations of the slaves and indentured servants who took part in this rebellion were more likely to be about gaining their freedom than exterminating the natives. There was certainly evidence of a good deal of co-operation between slaves and w/c white people in the early settled America but at the same time it was by no means universal. I'm pretty sure that white supremacy was a thing before the laws enacted in response to Bacon's rebellion, look at Columbus or any other European settler colonist. Like class hierarchies, it was also an import.

What is entailed by treating everyone like a human being? Who sets that standard? Who can we appeal to when different human beings have conflicting interpretations? Again I'm not opposed to the sentiment only the reasoning.

What is entailed by treating everyone like a human being?

Treating everyone like a white heterosexual male. And come on: now you're just being a contrarian. You perfectly understand what is meant by the lay words "courtesy" and "human being". Not everything really needs a detailed monograph.

Fleur

The first of the Virginia slave codes were enacted into law in the 1650s, before the Bacon rebellion. Although it is true that Bacon's rebellion was an uprising which involved people of all races, slaves and indentured servants alike, it was not exactly a liberation movement. Bacon himself was a wealthy landowner with an immense personal, political rivalry between himself and the Virginia governor and the rebellion was in essence about demands that landowners be allowed to native people from their lands and settle them. The rebellion's manifesto proposed the extermination of all indigenous people. The motivations of the slaves and indentured servants who took part in this rebellion were more likely to be about gaining their freedom than exterminating the natives. There was certainly evidence of a good deal of co-operation between slaves and w/c white people in the early settled America but at the same time it was by no means universal. I'm pretty sure that white supremacy was a thing before the laws enacted in response to Bacon's rebellion, look at Columbus or any other European settler colonist. Like class hierarchies, it was also an import.

Sorry I missed this response when the page changed. I'm not trying to get into a dick measuring contest with dates, I'm just trying to show the structural basis for racism. Different colonies had different slave codes enacted at different times. The original slaves I mentioned a few posts back for instance were under the control of a dutch colony, who in turn would eventually pass their own slave codes as their station developed. Depriving them of the ability to own property and mingle with Europeans, etc. My point is that each was in response to an existential threat faced by the governing hierarchy. The threat of European indentured servants and African slaves seeing themselves as being in the same boat was too great to allow. Surely these two groups recognized physical differences and otherness in one another but the concept of race was developed on top of a legal structure, not organic interactions between humans alone.

The early conquest and enslavement of the Americas by Columbus and others for instance had religious motivations rather than racial motivations. Only later would those conquests be put into the context of racial superiority.

I imagine that a rural Afghan man would have different expectations and interpretations of what it means to be given the rights and privileges of a human being than a woman living in London would.

I imagine that a rural Afghan man would have different expectations and interpretations of what it means to be given the rights and privileges of a human being than a woman living in London would.

Yes, but you know what "courtesy" and :"treating someone like a human being" means. We are, after all, trying to communicate something here. It's pretty easy to take your point, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees, but surely you must get the point Fleur and I are making as well? While Libcom.org strives to be global, these message boards are dominated by Anglo-American so most discussions, especially when it comes to something as specific as trans-racialism, concerns that culture. Sure, we should not be Euro-centric, but we are, so that's the context we're operating with.

I think the early conquest and enslavement of the Americas had financial motives, which far exceeded any religious motivations but I don't think you can exclude race from the equation. Racism had roots in Europe before the conquest of the Americas, in Tudor England for example Elizabeth I proclaimed that there were too many "Blackamoores" in London and ordered their deportation. This book is interesting
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blackamoores-Africans-England-Presence-Origins/dp/0953318214
Clearly there were POC in Europe prior to the American colonies, of varying degrees of status and there was co-operation, friendships and relationships between people of different races but there was also racism and along with every other bit of baggage, it was exported to the new world.
People often use religion as an excuse and certainly it has been the cause of much misery but in the same way as some people say they are anti Islam when they really mean anti arab, the Christianization motive of the Europeans was a convenient cover for genocide and plunder.

Khawaga

I imagine that a rural Afghan man would have different expectations and interpretations of what it means to be given the rights and privileges of a human being than a woman living in London would.

Yes, but you know what "courtesy" and :"treating someone like a human being" means. We are, after all, trying to communicate something here. It's pretty easy to take your point, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who disagrees, but surely you must get the point Fleur and I are making as well? While Libcom.org strives to be global, these message boards are dominated by Anglo-American so most discussions, especially when it comes to something as specific as trans-racialism, concerns that culture. Sure, we should not be Euro-centric, but we are, so that's the context we're operating with.

I've said repeatedly that I understand what you're saying. I think I've indicated that I approach my own interactions with people with the same set of ethics as well. I don't think its unreasonable in any sense to take into consideration the idea of not doing X, Y or Z if its making someone uncomfortable. What I've taken issue with is your reasoning behind doing that.
Being courteous or treating someone like a human being is in no way a self evident fact of life. Its something subjective which is consciously put into practice, or not put into practice for that matter, by participants of a given society. Its social activity not a law of nature. Treating it as if it were a law of nature has no basis and is of no use to us.

Treating it as if it were a law of nature has no basis and is of no use to us.

How on earth do you get that from what I've written? Then you've read way more into what I've been writing and have indeed not understood what I've been saying (because I've not been saying what you think I've been saying). When I've said we "should" treat everyone like human beings. That's a normative statement that recognizes that that is not the way things are currently and is therefore

something subjective which is consciously put into practice, or not put into practice for that matter, by participants of a given society

We live in a racist and sexist society so (duh!), treating someone like a human being would require such effort from people. If there was anything you should assume I meant, then that would be that.

I think I've indicated that I approach my own interactions with people with the same set of ethics as well.

I don't think you did. But I certainly was not sure why you were taking such an issue with the rather mundane observations I made. I now understand your confusion, although not where it came from.

It came from this

Fleur

All I'm saying is that sometimes dogma needs to take second place to the objections of people who feel oppressed by certain behaviours, even if those actions are not meant maliciously. If someone has been subjected to racism, for generations, we owe them the courtesy of taking their point of view into consideration when they ask people to desist from a certain action which they feel is racist. They're the better judge of what is racist than the person carrying out this action. Race is a social construct but if you've been subjected to racism your entire life, that's probably not a particularly useful sentiment.

Specifically the part about dogma to which I assume they are referring to the role of classes and institutions in determining culture rather than the other way around as that is what was being discussed. My response was that they had in turn risen the idea of courtesy itself to the level of dogma.

Yeah, but that was Fleur, not me.

And I don't think Fleur would ever suggest that

classes and institutions determine culture rather than the other way around.

Specifically the part about dogma to which I assume they are referring to the role of classes and institutions in determining culture rather than the other way around as that is what was being discussed.

No, that's not what I meant at all :P

What I was alluding to was that whenever cultural appropriation shows up as a conversation, including on other occasions on this site, some smartarse will pop up with an anarchist soundbite. Somebody will find a quote about all culture needing to be destroyed. Somebody will state that religion is evil and fuck anyone who feels that their spiritual beliefs are being belittled. Then someone will say race is a social construct, so it doesn't matter. Somebody will find a completely irrelevant quote from Bakunin. That's what I mean by dogma, treating the subject as an exercise in theoretical opinion, rather than a concrete issue which effects real people.

edit: Not to forget my favourite one (here on libcom I think) where some guy suggested scantily clad underwear models wearing war bonnets was actually a good thing for feminism because in Sioux society only men get to wear the headdresses. :D

recuperation

Can I just come back to say it's really easy to get the wrong end of the stick when discussing things online, I was getting progressively more confused about what we were arguing about. tbh, I don't think we're really disagreeing on anything much :)

Fleur

recuperation

Can I just come back to say it's really easy to get the wrong end of the stick when discussing things online, I was getting progressively more confused about what we were arguing about. tbh, I don't think we're really disagreeing on anything much :)

that's certainly what it looked like to me from the outside. It looked like you guys were talking at cross purposes

I think recuperation is coming from the standpoint that everything is a creation of society and nothing is truly real, Which is both true and in practise not always helpful and can be used to justify all sorts of bad behaviour.

Culture is both something that is created and something that develops over time. It can also be channeled and changed for a variety of purposes and outside forces can also have a massive effect, for example racism can entrench affect or even create an identity, for example the idea of a unified black identity in the US (irish, arabs etc). But this process is extremely unpredictable and the interactions are very complex and never in a single direction. For example the French ideas of equality etc are based on the idea that everyone is a citizen, but this is paralleled by the destruction of previous identities (all regional languages in the early 20th century) and then creates further problems for the nationalist project as those they wish to exclude acquire nationality and then you need to find other ways to maintain exclusion, or decide to reformulate nationality.

I don't know much about early slavery but I do remember reading that thee was tension from various places because slaves were often treated better than indentured servants as the former were a capital investment whereas the latter were repaying a loan and as such were less valuable.

Soory this is a bit meandering and I am not sure if it is entirely useful.

Once again Auld bod has an interesting anecdote (as well as good posts) about a subject. You probably know that there are Orange lodges and churches in Africa as well.

jef costello

I don't know much about early slavery but I do remember reading that thee was tension from various places because slaves were often treated better than indentured servants as the former were a capital investment whereas the latter were repaying a loan and as such were less valuable.

this sounds like the irish slaves meme, and doesn't seem to be true at all
Liam Hogan's written a few articles on that https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/liam-hogan/two-years-of-irish-slaves-myth-racism-reductionism-and-tradition-of-diminis

https://medium.com/@Limerick1914/all-of-my-work-on-the-irish-slaves-meme-2015-16-4965e445802a

if you use twitter hes worth following https://twitter.com/Limerick1914

radicalgraffiti

this sounds like the irish slaves meme, and doesn't seem to be true at all
Liam Hogan's written a few articles on that https://www.opendemocracy.net/beyondslavery/liam-hogan/two-years-of-irish-slaves-myth-racism-reductionism-and-tradition-of-diminis

Thanks, I didn't realise I was talking rubbish, no idea how I accidentally picked up an alt-right meme. Looks like I need to pay more attention when I read.

The Irish Slaves meme has become huge in right wing circles, seeping into mainstream politics. Liam Hogan has done an excellent job at debunking it and he's well worth reading on the subject.

White Trash by Nancy Isenberg covers the history of class in the US and propagation of whiteness/white supremacy in this period.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27209433-white-trash

Fleur

Like suck it up kid, it's fine for people to continuously insult you in a racist way after many, many requests to stop it because some geezer in Chelsea has a large collection of Subhumans records on vinyl.

I don't understand how Cultural appropriation is insulting UNLESS it's not Cultural appropriation but mocking ... black fact isn't Cultural appropriation because there is no culture among black People to put stuff on their face and act like fools ... that's simply racism.

If a white hippy kid wears dreadlocks that is Cultural appropriation, he is probably wearing it because he likes the rasta culture ... he's not mocking the culture, he's not insulting it, it is in NO WAY equivalent to black face.

Let me give you an example, I'm hispanic; I live in europe, if I go to a party where everyone is dressed like a cholo, or like a mariachi, and they're mockingly acting like "gangbangers" or something like that; that is'nt Cultural approrpation, that's mocking.

if a white woman (or anyone else) wants to wear a poncho or something like that, ok ... it comes out of Mexican culture but races and ethnicities don't "Own" Cultural artifacts, they are part of the commons.

It wasn't me suggesting that cultures and institutions exist separately, it was Rommon -

My point was that cultures do dominate ie English speaking culture in Canada and the US and they do dominate because institutions and classes enforce this.

I was not suggesting they exist seperately, I said institutions oppress People, cultures do not, I'm not saying institutions don't influence cutlure, of course they do .... climate influnces culture, everything influences culture, just becuase climate influences culture that doesn't mean that culture is making it rain outside.

The domination of certain cultures is not simply because certain cultures are the ruling class and their cultures dominate ... it's MUCH more complicated than that.

Rommon

I don't understand how Cultural appropriation is insulting UNLESS it's not Cultural appropriation but mocking ... black fact isn't Cultural appropriation because there is no culture among black People to put stuff on their face and act like fools ... that's simply racism.

Well there's examples like Katy Perry's AMA awards performance from a few years ago: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/25/cultural-appropriation-katy-perry_n_4337024.html

It's not 'mocking' as such, it was probably supposed to be 'exotic'. But rather than a synthesis of cultures/art/music etc. all you had was really shitty orientalist pastiche.

Similarly clothes shops will sell 'kimonos' to mean 'vaguely east-asian looking long shirt' as opposed to Japanese traditional dress.

I wouldn't even know about Katy Perry's AMA performance or 'kimonos' if it wasn't for people critiquing them on twitter, but while they're not a priority for me, I'm immediately suspicious if someone tries to defend them too.

It doesn't have to be 'offensive' even, but it's lazy, shit, and if you're familiar with a culture that's very obvious, but less so for the intended audience of white tweens, and some examples reinforce racial stereotypes and prejudices.

This doesn't mean 'cultural appropriation' = 'bad', but recuperation and repackaging of things by large companies fronted by mediocre people is alienating, and people are reacting to that.

But then there are better examples of cultural appropriation like Northern Soul or Two Tone. With two-tone you had mixed-race groups from the UK making music from their own experience - this is still 'appropriation' but it's completely different to Katy Perry at the AMA. Some of the discussions obscure those points but it's not as if there isn't 150+ years of social democrats making shit arguments about class and calling it 'marxism' and 'socialism' too.

@Jef there's the Irish Slaves meme but I also wonder if you're thinking about convict leasing.

This was the re-introduction of forced labour in the US after the Reconstruction period (immediately post civil war), which then ran up until 1945 in more or less the same form. Vagrancy laws, convict leasing etc. meant a lot of freed slaves were essentially recaptured and put to work for various employers. Sometimes this was on plantations, but often in iron and coal mines since obviously US industry was changing at the same time.

I'm not sure there's been a comparison of conditions between convict leasing and chattel slavery, but 'Slavery By Another Name' by Blackmon does make the point that a lot of employers who couldn't afford slaves as property, were able to cheaply acquire convict labour because they just had to pay jail fees rather than actually purchase someone - even if people then got worked to death and were never able to pay debts due to deductions, wage theft, being illegally re-leased, sentences extended etc. So it seems at least possible that in some cases at least, haphazard, industrial forced convict labour which resulted from a backlash to Reconstruction may have had worse conditions than some of the 'better' stable plantations before the civil war, and with labour replaceable by having the police arrest some more people walking down the street as opposed to requiring legal purchase. Then again it doesn't need to be better or worse, two things can be bad.

On Dolezal, someone said somewhere "If I'm a dark skinned black woman, do I get to be white?" and the answer is "obviously not" since police, landlords, employers etc. are not going to suddenly agree with you. Dolezal also sued a university for discriminating against her for being white, so she was white when it suited her in that case too. The interview posted by fleur was pretty good I thought.

Well there's examples like Katy Perry's AMA awards performance from a few years ago: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/25/cultural-appropriation-katy-perry_n_4337024.html

It's not 'mocking' as such, it was probably supposed to be 'exotic'. But rather than a synthesis of cultures/art/music etc. all you had was really shitty orientalist pastiche.

Yeah, I dont' really find that to be racist or insulting or anything, it might have been kitsch, but it's not really racist, I mean I didn't see the performance so I can't say for sure.

Similarly clothes shops will sell 'kimonos' to mean 'vaguely east-asian looking long shirt' as opposed to Japanese traditional dress.

I wouldn't even know about Katy Perry's AMA performance or 'kimonos' if it wasn't for people critiquing them on twitter, but while they're not a priority for me, I'm immediately suspicious if someone tries to defend them too.

It doesn't have to be 'offensive' even, but it's lazy, shit, and if you're familiar with a culture that's very obvious, but less so for the intended audience of white tweens, and some examples reinforce racial stereotypes and prejudices.

This doesn't mean 'cultural appropriation' = 'bad', but recuperation and repackaging of things by large companies fronted by mediocre people is alienating, and people are reacting to that.

Yeah, but that's what Capitalism does, it takes genuine and Rich Cultural artifacts, and makes then lazy and Garbage ... but this has nothing to do With racism.

On Dolezal, someone said somewhere "If I'm a dark skinned black woman, do I get to be white?" and the answer is "obviously not" since police, landlords, employers etc. are not going to suddenly agree with you. Dolezal also sued a university for discriminating against her for being white, so she was white when it suited her in that case too. The interview posted by fleur was pretty good I thought.

Exactly ... race isn't some Identity, it's not what you feel like, it's a category that Europeans made up in the 1800s and is still used to Place People, it's a category People put you in.

Go back 2000 years and no one would know what you were talking about if you said you were "white", no one categorized themselves as white for black because those were not categories that society used.

Yeah, I dont' really find that to be racist or insulting or anything, it might have been kitsch, but it's not really racist, I mean I didn't see the performance so I can't say for sure.

You personally don't have to find something racist or insulting for it to be racist. It's fine to have an opinion, but normally I'd watch something and read around it a bit before forming one tbh. I try to know as little about what Katy Perry does as possible but this looked very ropey to me at the time.

And this particular incident being racist or not doesn't have to stand in for every time someone dresses up in east asian clothing, all depends on context. Googling quickly now, I found that she'd warn an actual kimono before and no-one batted an eyelid. On the other hand, http://24.media.tumblr.com/a77cbb92fa3ea98f05db84271f066b96/tumblr_mwubwacHtG1rd1aw5o1_500.png?w=240

Rommon

Yeah, but that's what Capitalism does, it takes genuine and Rich Cultural artifacts, and makes then lazy and Garbage ... but this has nothing to do With racism.

Can it be both?

While we're here, from 2009: http://www. dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1225457/After-60-years-Al-Jolson-mimic-banned-blacking-up.html

John Wray, director of the show's production company AIR, said the theatrical convention of white actors painting their faces with boot polish or grease paint is a key part of Jolson's legacy, adding: 'It's a historical fact and not in any way derogatory.'

Equity union spokesperson then goes on to justify blackface too:

"The actors' union Equity said it normally opposes blacking up.
But spokesman Martin Brown said: 'It can't be justified except in very exceptional circumstances and this is one of them. You can't do an Al Jolson show without blacking up.'

I don't want to get into the weeds about what is and what is not racist; frankly it doesn't interest me that much.

What matters to me is Things like a cop pulling a gun on me at the Beach almost literally for just sitting in the wrong area. Or People being handcuffed outside their home and humiliated for no reason. Not celebrities being campy.

To me I don't view this as a problem of People being sensitive to Cultural identities or something like that, it's about People being literally shot, all the time, humiliated, inprisoned and so on.

I just think the langauge of "racism" has been so polluted by Cultural nonsense it's become meaningless.

Cory Booker (sleazy New York Politician) once said he doesn't think the police have a racism problem in New York ... which I'm sure from his point of view they don't, he's a wealthy politician living in a Nice area and hanging out With bankers.

This is why I like to focus on class and economics first.

I think race is all about how one is perceived by society, not necessarily how one identifies. For example, these "racially ambiguous" celebrities, they can avoid the stigma of "blackness" because they are lighter skinned. It really depends on what time and what place you're talking about.

Ps it's my first time posting here so please be kind

I guess people are probably aware that this article about transracialism by Rebecca Tuvel caused a huge controversy here in the states a few weeks back. She was criticized by academics and various feminists, who insisted the journal Hypatia retract the article. They did, and their associate editors apologized publicly for having published it, but then their main editor publicly disagreed with the apology. I'm posting a handful of related articles below, after the original article. You can obviously seek out more, and especially more that side with the critics of Tuvel's piece.

For myself, I agree with Tuvel's main points, and find that transracialism is "a thing" as much as race or gender are.

In Defense of Transracialism by Rebecca Tuvel
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/hypa.12327/full

Response: Open letter to Hypatia https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1efp9C0MHch_6Kfgtlm0PZ76nirWtcEsqWHcvgidl2mU/viewform?ts=59066d20&edit_requested=true&fbzx=-4143543816972218400

A Line in the Sand for Academic Philosophy
http://quillette.com/2017/05/09/line-sand-academic-philosophy/

A Journal Article Provoked a Schism in Philosophy. Now the Rifts Are Deepening.
http://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Journal-Article-Provoked-a/240021

This Is What a Modern-Day Witch Hunt Looks Like
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/05/transracialism-article-controversy.html