Posted: Sun 03 Sep 2006 19:45 Post subject: Re: What is "Whiteness"?
triguy wrote:
To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: George, there you go again, picking and choosing words to suit your position, and disregarding stated positions to cobble together a rickety counter attack. So, where did I write that anything about people not being able to describe themselves as ethnically or phenotypcially "white" if they so choose?
George, you're the one who is obsessed with attaching labels or forcing people to choose labels they don't desire. You're the one who is upset that Brooks doesn't choose a white identity, not I. What right do you have to malign Brooks' for self-identifying as mixed?
Triguy steadfastly defends everyone's right to identify non-white. (Isn't it a label that Triguy "attaches"?) Triguy has not yet identified what manner of "force" I or anyone who agrees with me use? Peer pressure would be nice -- if we had any.
I do not "malign" Dr. Juanita Brooks of My Shoes for self-identifying as "mixed." Triguy misrepresents me. I challenge Brooks and her organization's justification for inducing "multiracial children, adolescents and adults who have a white appearance" to self-identify expressly "non-white."
At some point we need to realize that "... having a white appearance" is a physical condition. It is natural, not "attaching labels" by ODR-opponents. If the "white" racial phenotype "biology" is what really bugs Triguy (or Brooks), tough! Get over it! My interest, at the end of the day, is replacing hypodescent, ODR "races" with these not-dishonest racial phenotype descriptors. (Note: "Racial" is not a noun. It doesn't "color"-label any "other race" or catalogue any taxonomy of named "different races.")
The problem for me is Brook's seeming to support the ODR. The Hypodescent, ODR System, biases ambivalently "non-white" racial identities so that these always work out complying with (supporting) hypodescent and the ODR. How can anyone opposed to the ODR not grasp this? (Is Triguy opposing the ODR, or supporting it?) Brooks promotes the ODR by her consoling "multiracial children, adolescents and adults who have a white appearance" that they are not good enough to be White. "Racist Whites," they are warned, will cruelly reject them. "Whites" are racially "pure," according to ODR myth. "[M]ultiracial children, adolescents and adults who have a white appearance" may even hear they risk lynching, if caught "passing for white" by alleged fanatically "racist whites" -- whose acceptance of Latino "mixedness" (often in marriage) is not brought up. Brook's "white"-appearing multiracials will be counseled to disbelieve their own logical understanding that when "whites" insist, e.g.: "But you're really white," then it means "mixed-white" are accepted as "white." (E.g., see Jessica's post on My Shoes home page.) Suspicion enters my mind that Brook's real purpose is peddling the ODR System, not supporting "multiracial children, adolescents and adults who have a white appearance."
Do we need to question the merits of the Hypodescent ODR System? In America, people are free -- enjoy a right to be "non-white" if they wish to -- the right Triguy defends. The System, however, seeks to Balkanize us by pitting its biasedly defined "non-white" against "white." The lack of biological grounding for any such white vs. non-white conflict (& centuries of clearly demonstrable associated harm) makes me oppose the System.
George
winwinkel wrote:
triguy wrote:
Winwinkel (George) wrote:
Quote:
So what is wrong with "white privilege"? Why not "broaden[] the definition of whiteness"?
My suggestion was for everyone who can to claim "white privilege."
triguy wrote:
White Privilege is about being a part of psuedo aristocracy, born or allowed to join a group of humans who are recognized for being better and deserving of more rights and benefits not through merit but through luck, subjugation and oppression.
winwinkel wrote:
I do not promote discrimination or elitism.
How can Winwinkel say with any honesty that he does not promote discrimination or elitism when he also promotes the idea that more people should benefit from White privilege? White privilege is inherently based in discrimination and creation of an elite class of people. Winwinkel might want to do some research into the history of Oklahoma and how classifying Native Americans as white was used as discriminatory tool against blacks and appalling separated Native American-identified blacks from their community.
Moreover, Winwinkel has stated his own elitist beliefs reflected in his comments that described Native Americans as welfare parasites who take away tax dollars from Americans. Winwinkel furthermore chose to ignore that Native American tribes are legally defined nations. In contrast, Winwinkel chose to laud the white Amish.
Similarly, Winwinkel last year exhorted the superiority and sacredness of heterosexual marriage, denying the rights of gays and lesbians to enter into legally recognized, monogomous unions. In doing so, Winwinkel was willing to disregard a growing body of evidence that clarifies that sexual orientation is the result of genetics and in utero environmental agents that shape the human brain. Although many people share a similar moral and religious conviction, that in no way justifies the oppression of a class of people. Many Americans held similar bigoted/elitist views about the sacredness of racial purity and encoded in law the proscription against marriage between whites and non-whites.
Posted: Mon 04 Sep 2006 08:01 Post subject: Where should the "white" color-line be located?
triguy wrote:
How can Winwinkel say with any honesty that he does not promote discrimination or elitism when he also promotes the idea that more people should benefit from White privilege? White privilege is inherently based in discrimination and creation of an elite class of people.
"White privilege" is simply another name for "white" in the minds of some, including Triguy, I gather. Anyway, this was the sense I meant. Why can't the "color-line" be pushed much further away from the Scotts-Irish look that defined "white people" when Ben Franklin condemned dark-skinned Hessians (Germans) as impossible to assimilate? The Supreme Court in United States v. Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923) rejected the citizenship application of a man from India who anthropological science classified as Caucasian. The 1923 Court rejected such "science," choosing instead its own intuition about who was "white" in the contemplation of the controlling 1790 naturalization statute (repealed 1952). Latinos all were "white" when I was a youngster growing up in Texas. I sat in class in the 1950s next to deep brown Mexican farm workers' children (some, probably illegal recent immigrants, couldn't speak a word of English), when the Jim Crow laws wouldn't let American "black" children (our own former slaves' great-grandkids) within rifle-range of our "white" public schools.
Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339 (1960) stopped all movement of the "white" endogamous "color-line" away from the Scotts-Irish look frozen in the 1790 naturalization act. From 1960-on being "non-white" had political capital -- recognized by those aware of how to work the census-"identity" voting district-gerrymandering system. Hypodescent and the ODR became useful tools for this identity politics. This is the institutionalized status quo that I try to unseat by various strategies, including grassroots insurrection of individuals declaring their own relocated "white" "color-line." It is not for "elitism." It is really the opposite.
triguy wrote:
Winwinkel has stated his own elitist beliefs reflected in his comments that described Native Americans as welfare parasites who take away tax dollars from Americans.
Triguy can describe Native Americans as "welfare parasites ...." I never wrote such harsh things.
triguy wrote:
Winwinkel furthermore chose to ignore that Native American tribes are legally defined nations. In contrast, Winwinkel chose to laud the white Amish.
I care not what color the Amish are. The point is, with no government help, no treaties, no "legally defined nation" Amish constructed their own version of tribal lifestyle. They, the Hutterites, and others demonstrate what Indians potentially could do with their full citizenship Bill of Rights. I have a taxpayer problem with the U.S. government forming treaties outside of constitutional American citizenship with "nations" who exist as such essentially on the racial color of their skins! I can think of no legitimate government activity unique to semi-sovereign Indian tribal governments besides establishing the tribal religion. The U.S. Constitution's First Amendment clearly states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion ...." Indian reservations are ready-made voting-district ghettoes in the sense of Gomillion v. Lightfoot, supra, 364 U.S. 339. I suspect this is where their real "treaty"-power comes from.
triguy wrote:
Winwinkel last year exhorted the superiority and sacredness of heterosexual marriage, denying the rights of gays and lesbians to enter into legally recognized, monogomous unions.
Triguy misrepresents me again. I make only secular (e.g., logical) objections to same-sex "marriage." I make no sectarian ("sacredness") objections.
California legislated a domestic partnership (civil union) for same-sex. I supported this, because it was expressly off-limits to heterosexuals of child-bearing age. The new civil union enabled gays to "marry" with full regalia, call it "marriage" -- anything they want -- basically enjoying equal legal rights. Lo and behold, organized Gay Activism spurned the civil union act. Instead they flocked up to San Francisco city hall demanding (and for a time getting) the full shebang -- heterosexual marriage licenses! The state of the controversy today, I think, is the Gay Rights' demand for dictionary redefinition of the word "marriage" to be "sex blind." I am sure this destroys marriage, a word (an idea) whose core meaning is linked to heterosexuality. Will Triguy or supporters of same-sex "marriage" insist our state governments (which issue marriage licenses) be "sex-blinded," stopped from knowing which married couples are heterosexual -- the only couples who can get pregnant, have children -- all those issues? Well, isn't this "blinding" certainly the consequence of redefining "marriage" to mean sex-irrelevant? What weird new vocabulary, what intriguing census interrogatories will Triguy have to invent in order to re-train state governments that some "married" humans procreate children from their sex-acts?
triguy wrote:
Winwinkel was willing to disregard a growing body of evidence that clarifies that sexual orientation is the result of genetics and in utero environmental agents that shape the human brain.
I read Triguy describing homosexuality as a birth defect -- a disease -- which medicine likely will soon be able to prevent or cure. Good! Clearly we don't need to rupture our society -- and destroy marriage -- in an effort to accommodate the preferences of surviving sufferers from a disease whose end is almost in sight.
triguy wrote:
... moral and religious conviction[s of Americans] ... in no way justifies the oppression of a class of people. Many Americans held similar bigoted/elitist views about the sacredness of racial purity and encoded in law the proscription against marriage between whites and non-whites.
It distresses to see Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) used to peddle same-sex "marriage." The Loving Court did the great bulk of work needed to deconstruct "the races." The Court overturned as unconstitutional the whole Racial Integrity Act, lock, stock, and barrel. This tossed out hypodescent "blood quantum" rules; it tossed the ODR. All these had been necessary paraphernalia for (a) defining "races" banned from inter-marrying, and (b) criminalizing the marriages. Loving overturned "races" with the "anti-miscegenation" laws enforced to keep "the races" "different." But "same-sex" is not "criminalized." There is no felony law against "same-sex"; instead, our concept of "marriage," by its definition, simply cannot comprehend itself any way but heterosexual. Our institution of marriage (intrinsically heterosexual) is what the Gay Lobby are bent on crushing. For argument they draw false analogy to interracial, in Loving v. Virginia. But Loving dealt with heterosexual marriage oppressed only on arbitrary grounds of alleged "different races." Although Loving did not expressly hold there are no "races," it largely deconstructed "races," their statutory "blood" and ODR definitions. Loving's substantial deconstruction of "races" made interracially married couples similarly situated as other heterosexual married couples. Loving applied the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection. But sexes are infinitely different from "races." Same-sex individuals are not similarly situated as heterosexual married couples of any "color." The Fourteenth Amendment cannot not make "equal" what is not "similar" under any stretch of the imagination.
I think there is more to this same-sex "marriage" controversy than poor little damaged in utero foetuses emerging with their sex-preference inverted. Under the rubric of "oppression" and "equal" "group rights" a menagerie of aggrieved "identities" are materializing, all presenting the same "victimization" briefs. No such thing as homosexual "identity" existed before the 1950s (Kinsey) -- now it's a quasi ethnicity! Homosexual acts, until very recently, were merely problematic conduct that people had struggled with in various ways since the dawn of history. My local National Public radio station a few weeks ago (none support gay rights more than NPR), instructed male listeners in coping techniques for new prisoners. (NPR knows its listener audience.) The "coping" instruction, in unblushing detail, was how to submit to homosexuality in prison. NPR radio lesson No. 1 -- straight men can (and should!) invert while behind bars. I slithered away after listening to that public (partly tax-subsidized) radio program wondering to myself: Since Nature has caused us defectives to be born with explicit sexual aparatii -- why cannot we all take a lesson from NPR and adapt ourselves (correctly) to the organs we find growing in/on our bodies -- just coping as we must while incarcerated here behind life's bars, so to speak? (Doing life.) Might this be the scriptural "coping" tip handed down to us from 3,000 years ago?
George
Joined: 28 Apr 2006 {Posts: 282 } Location: 51st State
Posted: Tue 05 Sep 2006 09:56 Post subject: Re: What is "Whiteness"?
winwinkel wrote:
Altertude wrote:
What I’m hearing is that non-whites should tick white on their application forms, and all will be right.
The point of this thread seems in danger of being lost.
The United States of America has two concepts: "black" people, and Black identity. The U.S. default state is "white"-White. Confusion has reigned ever since the first legislation of the "one drop rule" (ODR) in 1910, its subsequent spread and entrenchment in the American psyche. The ODR ruled that totally "white" phenotype could mean Black identity for some. My argument is, it is time for the ODR regime to end. (Time for regime-change.)
I’m for regime-change too. When the United States of America has no default state, its citizens will simply be members of species homo sapiens, the human race or Universal People. For those who have not studied the history of U.S racialism, the ODR is part of slavery, in terms of it being an expansion and refinement of antebellum slavery and Reconstruction laws punitive to recently emancipated Black slaves. Having said that, we should consider how long the ODR stood as law...57 years. How deeply does a law entrench itself in the American psyche in that length of time? Its almost 40 years since Loving v. Virginia overturned the ODR as a rule of law - maybe the American people need another 17 or so years in order to drop the ODR as custom.
Quote:
For this I counsel "white" people to identify White.
Oh, “white” people, now I overstand winwinkel’s suggestion. But lets read further.
Quote:
Outlawing interracial marriage ("anti-miscegenation" -- 1st enacted in Va. Colony 1691) was the original foundation of "races" and segregation. And outlawing intermarriage was necessary for defining practical "different races," ones able to last for more than a few generations. How could "different races" make any sense without endogamy and extended "family resemblance writ large"? The ODR ostensibly defines two "different races." It does so in terms of "none" and "any." It occurred to me that socially repealing the ODR (Loving v. Virginia Court overturned its law in 1967), needs people defying the ODR's premise.
Winwinkel writes of the 1691 original foundation of "races" and segregation in the Virginia colony, but in the next paragraph writes that ODR defines two “different races.” My understanding is that the ODR acts as a filter for the default privileged White state - sorting into which “race” a “white” appearing member of the Black endogamous group must go. The premise I see here is that the ODR supports two separate “races”, enshrined by the anti-miscegenation law.
Quote:
Thus, "white" people who identify White defy the ODR. Now, since the ODR's definitions -- "none" and "any" -- are key to who is "white"-Black or "black"-Black, and since no laws stand guard anymore over who is "white" or White, therefore it is a judgment call, I think, for each individual to decide when they personally should be White.
AFAIK, there was never a law over who is “white” (looks phenotypically European). A “white” person might want to judge for themselves what it would mean to be a White person with White Privilege.
Quote:
If we jettison the census classifications of us in "colored" "races" then wouldn't we all default to equal membership in our shared human race -- folk who can be any "color"?
Correct, we default to Universal People. But how does jettisoning classifications, and guaranteeing no person is mistreated on the basis of color/race, work with “white” people applying for White status?
Quote:
But we discover there is political resistance to this solution! It turns out that the ODR has political support, as if a life of its own. Therefore, combating the ODR seems to call for resistance, for tactics that work. Trying to win regime-change by insurgency this way, by the combined action of many individuals, I counseled "white" people to identify White in defiance of the ODR. Again, it is up to everyone to decide for themselves when they are "white." I can think of other identity strategies which will help win victory, too. However, complying with the ODR empowers it; complying does not resist the ODR.
The anti-miscenegation laws and ODR where political and legal constructions. They are causes which have continuing social effects, removing or overturning these laws does not remove their effects; remove the inequality. Black Americans appear to look upon “whites” applying to White Inc. as complicit with this political group secure in their gain from the now overturned racist laws.
Quote:
Is maintaining the U.S.'s caste system, its intolerable inequality and persistent endogamy, justified by someone's aim to get even? ("Reparations"?)
I don’t know. Have you described the U.S caste system elsewhere?
Quote:
How will "black" get equal to White without seizing ground by conquest?
The NAACP, and The National Black Caucas too I think, and unknown numbers of black Americans are of the opinion that holding “whites” within Black Inc. is the way to get equal. Can Whites release seized ground to those who need the most help?
Posted: Wed 06 Sep 2006 17:27 Post subject: Re: What is "Whiteness"?
Altertude wrote:
winwinkel wrote:
If we jettison the census classifications of us in "colored" "races" then wouldn't we all default to equal membership in our shared human race -- folk who can be any "color"?
Correct, we default to Universal People. But how does jettisoning classifications, and guaranteeing no person is mistreated on the basis of color/race, work with "white" people applying for White status?
It will work, I think, because basically anyone can be "white." When everyone is White there will no longer be "different races."
I anticipate the objection that everyone "white" heading for the door for "white privilege" may leave someone dark-skinned behind. The NAACP at hearings in 1997 objected to the multiracial census option protesting then that 70 percent of "blacks" would "head for the door." The hesitating 30 percent may feel too "black" to claim their "white privilege."
Altertude wrote:
The NAACP, and The National Black Caucas too I think, and unknown numbers of black Americans are of the opinion that holding "whites" within Black Inc. is the way to get equal.
A.D. Powell tries time and again to explain that ODR-mixing the Black identity with so much "white blood" is injurious to Blackness. I read Powell saying that Black is confused, even undermined when multiracial and "white" individuals win accolades "for blacks." (E.g., mulattress Hallie Berry accepting Oscar "for all black women") Of course, hypodescent or the ODR are the necessary gimmicks enabling this chameleon act to work. The worst side-effect perhaps is confusion in everyone's mind as to what dark "black" women's feminine beauty is? Is almost no one seeing it anymore? Black men pursue light-skinned beauties calling themselves "black." Do "white" men fill the void? Do we have circumstantial evidence of what dark "black" women think of themselves nowadays? Did this thread not start with sociology profs.' proclaiming that wrong-identification of one's "race" is hurtful? Powell argues that dark-skinned "black" women and children will construct themselves a healthier self-image if they are not upstaged by light-skinned oxymorons passing for "black."
I add to A.D. Powell's hypothesis one of mine proposing that a critical mass of people re-identifying as multiracial or "white" will cause the "different races" paradigm to collapse. It is not a matter of making people's skins change colors, of course. It is not ostentatious affected color-blindness, either. Rather, the idea is a new, upgraded conceptualization of what our Homo sapiens species is -- namely a single human race that can be any color.
Altertude wrote:
Can Whites release seized ground to those who need the most help?
The question is asked (here & elsewhere) in a way seeming to make social justice depend on the collective activity of two "different races." If Altertude promotes "color"-based wealth transfer programs, some version of Zimbabwe's dislodging its "white" farmers, I do not agree. Moreover, Negro-Americans a century ago turning away from Booker T. Washington, spurning self-reliance, to hear instead W.E.B. Dubois counseling them to blame Whitey and bleat for 40 acres and a mule, for "rights"-handouts, was not the wisest choice, I think. Afro-Americans cannot prove their natural equality by receiving it from the White house like a food stamp. President Lyndon Johnson's paternalistic "level playing field" doctrine of entitlements, produced, I think, the most virulent "racial toxin" since the ODR.
Altertude wants "guaranteeing no person is mistreated ...." I cannot offer guarantees. Life doesn't come with any that I know of. We do have laws, however, which prohibit mistreating people on the basis of their color, ancestry, or national origin -- bans on discrimination based on any of the facts from which "races" were constructed. We can live without "races" (which are abstractions) because civil rights enforcement operates on provable evidence -- evidence law requires it.
George
'
FAQ
Search
Register
Log in
