06 February 2012

The complexity of defining race and ethnicity

Two items converged this week.  First, a post at Reddit referenced an incident that occurred in 2004, when a white, Johannesburg-born high-school student in Nebraska wanted to compete for the "Highest-Achieving African American Student" award.
Records from 2002-2003 indicate only 56 of Westside’s 1,632 students were black, and some in this year’s student body were reportedly upset by Richards’ poster.

Ironically, the first two recipients of the student award were white. “It was not intended at the beginning to be one race only,” Clidie Cook, who helps organize the annual event, told the World-Herald. But Westside officials pushed to change that, feeling the spirit of the honor meant giving it to a black student, and by 2001, the ministerial alliance in charge specified it was for blacks only...

"Trevor is one of only maybe one or two other people that are actually from Africa. Trevor is more of an African-American than any other “African-American” at Westside. It is also wrong that there is an award for only black students when every other award at Westside is for everyone and everyone has an equal chance to receive those awards if they try."
The counterpoint comes from an Associated Press story published this week in the Seattle Times (and elsewhere):
Today, many are resisting this progression by holding on to a name from the past: "black." For this group... "African American" is not the sign of progress hailed when the term was popularized in the late 1980s. Instead, it's a misleading connection to a distant culture...

"It just doesn't sit well with a younger generation of black people," continued George, who is 38. "Africa was a long time ago. Are we always going to be tethered to Africa? Spiritually I'm American. When the war starts, I'm fighting for America."..

...at a 1988 gathering of civil-rights groups... Ramona Edelin, then president of the National Urban Coalition, urged those assembled to declare that black people should be called African American. Edelin says today that there was no intent to exclude people born in other countries, or to eliminate the use of black: "It was an attempt to start a cultural offensive, because we were clearly at that time always on the defensive." "We said, this is kind of a compromise term,"...

Today, it's unclear what term is preferred... In a January 2011 NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 42 percent of respondents said they preferred black, 35 percent said African American, 13 percent said it doesn't make any difference and 7 percent chose "some other term."
Some of my ancestors also arrived in this country about 150 years ago.  I don't refer to myself as Norwegian-American or German-American, but perhaps since I have a mixed lineage I also have a different perspective.

18 comments:

  1. My first trip to the US involved a stay with some extremely wealthy friends outside of NYC. As a young (and most certainly not wealthy) Irish tourist, I was amazed by the opulence. What amazed me even more was the way my hosts' white South African neighbours referred to black people. Not only did they spout casual racism, but they were very proud of the fact that their son had obtained entry to an Ivy League university because he is African-American. The fact that he was classed as such didn't faze me much - what horrified me was their glee that he had pulled this trick at the expense of a black student.

    Let's face it - being a white man in Europe or America is a huge advantage and even if you *technically* meet the criteria for something, if you're going against the spirit of it then you should think again. Some white people are just embarrassingly selfish.

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  2. a white, Johannesburg-born high-school student in Nebraska wanted to compete for the "Highest-Achieving African American Student" award.

    What an obnoxious ass.

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  3. I don't refer to myself as Norwegian-American or German-American, but perhaps since I have a mixed lineage I also have a different perspective.

    I know a boatload of people that refer to themselves as "Italian" or "Italian American" and so on with other European origins, Polish, Irish etc.

    I think the obvious difference is that there were no blacks in this country until they were brought here by force.

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    1. Uhh, Steve, at least some of the first people in this continent who had been born in Africa came here voluntarily, though granted the majority were brought here by force.

      DaBris

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    2. though granted the majority were brought here by force.

      What's your argument again?

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  4. Essentially, any sort of scholarship that has categories of qualification outside of academic performance are just another sad example of the way people misconstrue the meaning of education, scholars and knowledge. I am very much against rewarding student aid to those who are less of a student than others simply because of their ethnicity, religious affiliation, hair color, lineage, etc.

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    1. Your post reminds me of Roy L. Brook's poker analogy:

      “Two persons – one white and the other black – are playing a game of poker. The game has been in progress for some 300 years. One player – the white one – has been cheating during much of this time, but now announces: ‘from this day forward, there will be a new game with new players and no more cheating.’ Hopeful but suspicious, the black player responds, ‘that’s great. I’ve been waiting to hear you say that for 300 years. Let me ask you, what are you going to do with all those poker chips that you have stacked up on your side of the table all these years?’ ‘Well,’ said the white player, somewhat bewildered by the question, ‘they are going to stay right here, of course.’ ‘That’s unfair,’ snaps the black player. ‘The new white player will benefit from your past cheating. Where’s the equality in that?’ ‘But you can’t realistically expect me to redistribute the poker chips along racial lines when we are trying to move away from considerations of race and when the future offers no guarantees to anyone,’ insists the white player. ‘And surely,’ he continues, ‘redistributing the poker chips would punish individuals for something they did not do. Punish me, not the innocents!’ Emotionally exhausted, the black player answers, ‘but the innocents will reap a racial windfall.’”

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    2. The thing is, that analogy would only slightly apply to a select few people and a select few situations. I'm going to go out on a crazy limb here and assume that this is referring to American black slavery. I am a white American and all of my ancestors came from the Ireland to New York, never owned a slave and fought for the north in the civil war. My family assisted in ending slavery; should I be rewarded for something my ancestors went through? No. I believe living in a great country where I have the possibility of learning enough to be who I wish is reward enough. Should wealthy Africans who immigrate to America now be given advantages that people of Asiatic decent don't receive? Giving money to those who have not earned it is the opposite of what we were supposed to have learned from that section of segregated history. We are supposed to be equal in opportunity not favor one or the other because of what others have done. What you are saying is the definition of ignoring the integrity of knowledge.

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    3. @AnonymousFeb 7, 2012 08:44 AM

      I reckon most of us can agree that "we are supposed to be equal in opportunity." The problem is that white people in general have greater opportunities than black/hispanic people solely because of ancestry/skin color. While your ancestors may not have owned slaves, you are benefiting indirectly because other white people did.

      When we see that minority groups are doing poorly in certain areas, it's appropriate to assist and incentivize.

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  5. I believe that most U.S. blacks are of mixed lineage so being "mixed" isn't where your different perspective comes from. The truth is, what you look like is the biggest factor in racial identity (both your own and what others decide you are). Racism is most certainly not dead in this country and the fact our society still needs to compensate for sometimes cryptic but absolutely real prejudice based on superficial physical attributes.

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  6. "I don't refer to myself as Norwegian-American or German-American, but perhaps since I have a mixed lineage I also have a different perspective."

    Are you one of those who believe Africa to be a single country ?

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    1. Many blacks of slave descent have a difficult time tracing where their ancestors were taken from and most modern African borders are not those the African population would have drawn for themselves. I have never heard of a black person of slave descent referring to themselves as a coming from a specific country. My friends who are more recent immigrants do call themselves Kenyan or South African.

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    2. You are what you are, and You is what you is, accept it, move on, and stop looking for something for nothing!
      If it is worth to you to fight for then,.....fight for it.
      That being said, if it is just a statement for you to hear your own voice...............REALLY?...............

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  7. Wow! 2nd time today white folk can't catch an even break...

    http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2012/02/drudge-tea-party-impressionism-and-the-fine-art-of-obama-bashing/

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  8. american blacks are also mixed european and native. culture is more than skin deep, i'm not saying africans have it easy on this continent but american blacks are up against way more than their skin color here.

    i want to start calling whites "european-americans" and see how they like it.

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  9. I hate the use of the word "race" when speaking of people. (Of course, I'm not sure when else it would be used – people from other planets? But I digress). We are all of the human race, and so to say that someone's race is Black, Caucasian, etc feels forced - like we are looking for a reason to exclude, and perhaps we are. I don't object or ethnicity, because that seems much more regional and cultural. The whole concept of race never made sense to me, since if you remove a person’s skin you can’t tell what “race” someone is. We are able to have blood transfusions amongst the “races”, have babies, do organ transplants, etc.
    I once heard Thabiti Anyabwile explain the concept much better than I ever could when he was preaching and it was the first time I heard someone else say, much more elegantly than I, what I have been thinking for 40 years!

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  10. A tangent, but maybe it is worthwhile to consider the validity of a term like "European-Americans." It would be more accurate than just "white." This reminds me of the debate that arose during the last census when people of Middle Eastern descent were categorized as "white," and the response was that if they weren't treated as white or did not consider themselves white, then why should they pick that choice?

    If you go back to US censuses in past centuries, Irish and Eastern Europeans would not be categorized as "white" with other Europeans, either. David Roediger's _Working Towards Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White_ provides a lot of interesting material on the US history of the category, problematizing the projection of the modern category of homogenous "Whiteness" onto history.

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  11. someone once asked me what my heritage was "like where in europe did your family come from?" and i responded that i'm not from europe my mother's people are rednecks and my father's people are poor white trash and we're mixed liberally with various brown people who've been forgotten by history. i check the little box that says "other" when i fill out forms but i'm a white american.

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