I'm uncomfortable being called black.

[IamNoah]

Sensitive much?

If you don't want certain people in your thread, then maybe a public message board isn't for you.

No. I dislike you. I consider you as having a vicious and ill-formed mind. You are of no worth or use to me. I find you unpleasant and would prefer that you go away. I'm surely not the first person to have this reaction to you. One can only with difficulty imagine another reaction.

 

[LuckysRevenge]

No. I dislike you. I consider you as having a vicious and ill-formed mind. You are of no worth or use to me. I find you unpleasant and would prefer that you go away. I'm surely not the first person to have this reaction to you. One can only with difficulty imagine another reaction.

Actually I've been on this board for 8 years and am pretty well liked by a lot of people.

I'm sorry you don't like being called out for what appears to be internalized racism, low self-esteem and an unhealthy mental state. I've never said anything nasty and have only tried to help (something you seem to take no interest in).

Rather, you like to make random threads where you only like hearing what you want to hear. Or maybe whining and then subsequently lashing out at others is what it can be more accurately described as. Either way, I find that unfortunate and will continue to post in your threads. Not for you but for someone reading who actually cares about bettering him- or herself as a person.

Since you're not interested in constructive criticism, I can only offer you my pity. If I'm so abhorrent, I welcome you to block me.

 

[IamNoah]

Actually I've been on this board for 8 years and am pretty well liked by a lot of people.
There is no accounting for taste.
I'm sorry you don't like being called out for what appears to be internalized racism, low self-esteem and an unhealthy mental state. I've never said anything nasty and have only tried to help (something you seem to take no interest in).
I am not whatever strange fantasy of a person in need of your help that your feverish mind has invented little man.
Rather, you like to make random threads where you only like hearing what you want to hear. Or maybe whining and then subsequently lashing out at others is what it can be more accurately described as. Either way, I find that unfortunate and will continue to post in your threads. Not for you but for someone reading who actually cares about bettering him- or herself as a person. Once again since my threads seem to distress you, you should stay the fuck off of them you ill-mannered twit.

Since you're not interested in constructive criticism, I can only offer you my pity. If I'm so abhorrent, I welcome you to block me.
Give me your pity or anything else you want to. Just do it silently.

 

[Alnitak]

White isn't exactly a precise term either. All human skin tones are on a continuous spectrum of tans. Where one ends and the other starts is not necessarily defined.

 

[IamNoah]

White isn't exactly a precise term either. All human skin tones are on a continuous spectrum of tans. Where one ends and the other starts is not necessarily defined.

According to this stupid National Geographic sponsored ethnic genetic test thing Logan, me and one of his aunts did I'm basically three quarters European in origin with smaller amounts of Middle Eastern/Asian (including Native American) admixture with the largest aggregate after "European" being Sub-Saharan African. This more or less matches my known ancestry, but with the major exception that other than his Y-Chromosome apparently nothing about my Jewish grandfather is particularly Middle Eastern (maybe his mitochondrial line is middle Eastern too, but my results would suggest that he's mostly a Polish peasant). Interestingly I'm about twice as African as my husband, but this is sill a decided minority of my DNA. I have had no meaningful contact with black American culture--unless we count strange interactions with black people who are either offended at my not perceiving myself as black or accusing me of not having anything in particular to say about the black experience in the United States on account of my ancestry/skin color, class, or some other variable I have no control over.

 

[IamNoah]

Now having said all that I don't think this matters in some huge angsty tragic mulatto kind of way. I'm just sort of uneasy with being identified with a community that I a) am not a member of. b) am occasionally a victim of the hostility of because of my speech or other qualities. The most I can grant western civ as far as consistently indentifying myself ethnically is that I'm not white, which is a bit of a negative identification--but a real one. I've tried on over the last ten years or so various specific identities the most comfortable ones to wear has actually been as an Afro-Latino (two grandmothers who spoke Spanish as a first language though one of them was born in Louisiana) or as an undefined biracial person. I also sort of feel Jewish but my irreligious Catholicism 3/4 goyness complicates that particular identity.

 

[sixthson]

You're part of the human race, isn't that enough for you?

 

[bankside]

The angst, does it come from looking for a concrete ethnic identity? Or more from catering to other people's desires for you to proclaim one?

As a white person I don't have an ethnic identity and I'm doing just fine.

Since that may perplex some people let me add:
I don't mean to say I am one of those oblivious white people who thinks the world can be divided into "normal people" and "ethic people." I'm aware that whiteness can sort of be an ethnicity.

But speaking on behalf of all white people everywhere, we do not identify as White. White is an adjective, not an identity. This may be because the last person to get anywhere using whiteness as the basis for an identity was adolph hitler. And having been marked so profoundly by that experience, consequently there is no idea with less credibility than white people forming an identity based on ethnicity. If there is one thing you can reliably say about white people it is that we are not White. It isn't legitimate. We're suspicious of white people who want to be White. It even spills over into suspicion of other people who want to be Desi or Black or even Deaf.

This may be news to some non-white people whose own experience lead them to either have an ethnic identity foisted upin them, or who embraced such an identity out of the sense of belonging, support and affection it can bring, or perhaps defensively in the face of racism. But not only is an ethnic/colour-based identity optional, but most white people don't experience it and are even actively suspicious of it in other white people and other people in general.

And it is potentially a surprise to some how little support white people would give each other in any circumstance that would depend on some kind of communal camaraderie based on a shared identity. We don't have each other's back, as the expression goes, at least not based on whiteness.

It is not news to everyone however. And it is infuriating to certain politicised non-white people whose own strategies for political and social gains are based on trying to rebalance relationships between ethnically-conceived identity groups. Indeed you'll see some of them criticise the non-Whiteness of whites as an attempt to avoid dealing with contemporary injusticices rooted in history.

But white people won't have any of it. The only consistently reliable way to engage white people in the work of building an egalitarian society is to engage them as individuals. The only egalitarian society white people are interested in having is a post-racial one, where post-racial identities are open to anyone.

...except of course, that's not quite true any more. In the last 10 years there have been deliberate attempts to racialise white people and turn them into White people. It has picked up a bit of fringe traction amongst the sort of hippy leftish 20-something types who've spent too much time in undergraduate sociology courses or taking "critical theory" studies. The type I am likely to be suspicious of and dismiss as social justice warriors.

Not only because I find them annoying and misinformed. But because I think the absolutely stupidest possible thing contemporary society could ever do for our mutual safety, security, and prosperity would be to convince white people that they are actually White. Look at the shadows of history. In that direction pogroms lurk.

My best hope at this point is that people with non-white skin will continue participating in a post-racial identity, and that we will reacquaint ourselves with the universal human-rights values of the post-war era based on each of is having an identity as the equal bearers of rights. My urgent hope is that this will happen before demographic trends in the US make white-skinned people the minority.

If we're doing it right, nobody will even notice or care when it happens. In my mind that would be the measure of success. But it will require everyone to stop identifying based on skin colour, otherwise the whites will eventually clue in and feel self conscious, prompting them to reexamine the question of identity for the first time in a few generations. And it will require people to stop devaluing and discounting and trivialising the idea of a post-racial identity. And it will require people of all backgrounds to participate in that identity.

 

[bankside]

If we do it wrong, a notion of identity that people paid so much blood to kill off will be resurrected. People will have an identity to hang their grievances on, and that Frankenstein's monster will, even as a minority population, be lurching around, capable of doing a lot of damage.

Ummmm, so I say, go with post-racial, or mixed, or I Am Noah, but most of all just tell people to fuck off when they say you're not black enough or too black or not authentically bla bla bla. Just two simple words for you to share witht them: Fuck. Off.

 

[RRUGER]

Sounds like you have some deep seeded issues within yourself. Sign up for some ObamaCare and seek out some mental health services. You don't have to be miserable all your life.

lol its sad when people cant embrace both black and wht part of themselves.

As you can see we have another person uncomfortable being black so sad.

 

[RRUGER]

No real surprise there; Winfrey is a Racist-Amercian™.

here you are bashing black people again.

why dont you just start YOUR OWN KKK =and come out of the closet

 

[IamNoah]

RRUGER I think there is a danger of misreading/misinterpreting this post. I am uncomfortable being perceived as black because I'm not black. It is an assigned identity that no one on either side of my family has worn willingly for at least two centuries. Which somewhat answers a line in bankside's post as well. I feel related to/connected to blackness and I definitely look like ( AND AM) a person of the African diaspora and journey through many of the same issues around racism, white privilege, etc. But I feel like a cousin of mainstream American blackness if that makes sense, calling myself black with no caveats or further explanation seems disrespectful to most of my ancestors not least of all to my grandfather.

 

[zoltanspawn]

Bankside, what do you think the experience of a Racial person becoming post-Racial would be like? I am not necessarily opposed to your take on this. However, I do have a hard time imagining such a transformation. Would it be something like a Male becoming post-Male? Or a Gay becoming post-Gay? Or are those inaccurate comparisons?

Another smaller question: when you say 'critical theory' do you specifically mean 'critical race theory' ala Peggy McIntosh? Or are you genuinely critical of the (enormous) continental literature encompassing the myriad from Adorno to Zizek?

 

[IamNoah]

View attachment 1099959View attachment 1099960

 

[IamNoah]

I also find the general annoyance black people seem to feel about mixed race people not identifying as black somewhat mystifying given that I am frequently informed by black people that my skin tone, background, religion, partner, etc Mean that I am not authentically black.

 

[chrisrobin]

It says on my birth certificate that I am Caucasian. This is very confusing for me, since no one in my family is from the Caucasus.

 

[chrisrobin]

I also find the general annoyance black people seem to feel about mixed race people not identifying as black somewhat mystifying given that I am frequently informed by black people that my skin tone, background, religion, partner, etc Mean that I am not authentically black.

Tell them to go fuck off. Be proud of whom you are. The "authentically black" reference was bullshit from the 2008 presidential campaign. You are not here to fulfill anyone's expectations but your own!

 

[backagain]

I've been playing for years with biracial as a way of describing myself, but neither of my parents is white. My father was biracial but his mother is a jumbled mix of Latin American, Caribbean, and Louisiana Creole and my mother is the child of a mixed-race/Afro-Cuban mother and a father who was a Louisiana Creole person with a surprising bit of Filipino/Chinese ancestry. This does not cause me some kind of identity crisis exactly, I'm Noah. I descend from something like eight ethnic groups in eight generations. I feel sort of politically committed to black people and black issues and I feel somewhat pressured by both general American Culture and African American culture to identify as black--but I feel increasingly inappropriate when I try to speak about black concerns.

You're a mutt, like most of us.

 

[IamNoah]

Tell them to go fuck off. Be proud of whom you are. The "authentically black" reference was bullshit from the 2008 presidential campaign. You are not here to fulfill anyone's expectations but your own!

I suppose this is what it will have to reduce to.

 

[Kabluey]

There are just certain types of people who get anxious if people aren't neatly categorized for them.
Mixed race, bisexual, multilingual, nonpartisan, etc. Things that suggest chaos to people who want things in black and white (to coin a phrase).

That's their issue. Your identity is your own property.