Considering many kids who are white do it to each other, I would say prove those kids did it for the reasons you claim. Prove they wouldn't have done it if he had looked purely south asian. And finally, explain to me how sikhs, by your logic, were really arab terrorists, even though they were Indian. Because they were harrased after 9/11. I am sure they also screamed, "we are not arabs, we are not muslim," and still got shot at.
You seem to think only Blacks have been lynched in this country. You really need to look up the history of coolies in this country.
i can only assume by the tone of your responses that you are non-white but not of african american descent. that gives me a bit of a framework, unless i am waaaay off. (and if i am--awesome--i love to have my perceptions challenged). Prove to you that those kids did it for the reasons i claim?: how preposterous. tiger himself believed it was because if his racial identity, and i have thousands more (and more horrible) instances i can give you of behavior that, while not ratifying tiger's experience, certainly suggests that blacks have been the recipients of racial torture. shall i go into the james byrd case, the nyc groom just shot dead by police, james meredith, the woman who drove her kids into the lake and blamed a black man, the darkening of oj, the katrina looters? please, your straw men lack a moral and historical compass. yes, trot out your singular examples hoping to "tit for tat" me on the cruelty of man against man, autonomous from racial prejudice. we do it on numbers, i bet i win. we do it on a continuum that can be discerned as having a racial correlary; i bet i win, too. it's a numbers game i wish i couldn't win, but this country's history since its inception virtually gaurantees that i will.
and your invocation of post-9/11 racism is disingenuous and short sighted. that backlash was relatively short-lived; resulted in very few deaths (here at home at least, iraq is another story); and does not have 400 YEARS OF EMPIRICAL DATA behind it. same for your equivocation regarding coolies. how long has chinese america suffered due to that burden? how many coolies (yeah, i hate the word too) were lynched? black people (whether you like to admit it or not) are still suffering after effects of slavery. when the asian american population has the illiteracy; incarceration; matriculation; and employment rates of african americans, i will concede your point as to the devastating, lingering affects of white against chinese racism. oh yeah, conservative estimates place the death toll of africans brought to america during the slave trade at 30 million. that's conservative. now, again, how has the chinese population in america been irreparably wronged? i'll wait for your answer. you wanna use equivocation as a tool in an argument which relies on logic, you might want to stick with a syllogism which is tenable: like the effects of white racism on the native american. there, you might make some ground.
Most of those populations did live around Whites. The Lumbees live very much near White Americana.
your point again, is a zero sum argument. this means... what? that a statistically negligible population who chose to identify as non-black, lived near whites. so? the upper east side is blocks away from harlem. i don't get your point.
Left overs of disparity from a racist society yes. But evidence of current racism? Not necessarily. A lot of it is just intrapopulational violence and living conditions. You will find thes condition in all populations at this socioeconomic level.
wrong, wrong, wrong. intrapopulational violence and living conditions? you act as though this is accidental, or worse, a sort of stasis. people in ghettos (black or white) do not live there because they want to. it is very difficult to escape economic vortices; and i defy you to give me numbers that suggest that white americans have the same amount of recidivism--whether economically, or criminally--as blacks in relation to their parent's generation. i have looked, and made a study of it. whites tend to be able to rise above their parent's station more easily than blacks. and no, black america does not get a pass. they are, by this part in our narrative, part of the problem.
Cut throat capitalism, yes. But not caring for the poor and neglected is not automatically racist. Now if they lent a hand to the White poor and not to the Black, then it would be.
But the nature of entitlement white skin brings is a tacit "lending a hand." Do you honestly not believe that white skin equals privilege? i can't believe that. i won't. how anyone born in this country could believe that is beyond the pale for me.
So you admit it is mental. So if one does not by into that mental imposition why should he accept external interpretations?
i never said it was mental. i said that it was due to shared language and relatively insulated community; they often do not have to accept external interpretations because they have a culture (largely intact, in the form of music, language, ritual) that was denied africans during their INVOLUNTARY stay here. latinos came here of their own volition. that makes a huge difference, even 400 years later.
So if you had epicanthic folds, and people mistook you for Asian and harassed you that made you Asian? It plays a role, but it is not a make or break experience for all. I was harassed for looking White all my life. It didn't make me identify as White.
actually, i do have epicanthic folds and many people mistook me for asian. (i don't see it, but hey). no experience of racism is analogous to black in america. other races have not been infantilized, degraded, and marginalized to the degree and scope of black america. it would be like me going to the uk, and deciding that this whole southeast asian thing was "no big deal." nobody outside that country knows what it's like to be home grown and called a paki; and nobody who hasn't been here for generations knows what it means to be called a nigger--or have the power; whether used or not--to call someone one.
Considering genetics is showing 1/4 of White Americans have recent African ancestry, I would say it was a lot more than the melungeons who were passing.
and that poll doesn't address a lived reality. if i am "black" but don't look it or live the experience, am i? nope. i might be heir to the throne of england, but if i can't manifestly act on it, it's a worthless singifier. you are only passing if you are AWARE of the action. it is a conscious act. and please, enough with the melungeons and the lumbee and the isolate. i've told you specifically the context of any of my assertions; and their adherence to a mainstream black and white america. anecdotal/indigenous populations carry no graphic weight. (much love to the melungeons and the lumbee though!)
No. It is Sephardic jews who moved to those regions who are called Sephardic. Jews who never were in Spain are never called Sephardic.
uhh, sorry. partially incorrect. the commonly accepted (maybe not by you) definition of sephardic, or how the term is most often used in a real world context, in order to distinguish between jews of european and non-european descent is as follows, from wikipedia:
In a broader sense, the term Sephardi has come to include Jews of Arabic and Persian backgrounds who have no historical connection to Iberia except their use of the Sephardic-style liturgy. For religious purposes, Jews of these communities are considered to be "Sephardim", meaning not "Spanish Jews" but "Jews of the Spanish rite". (In the same way, Ashkenazim means "Jews of the German rite", whether or not their families actually originate in Germany.) Accordingly, in the vernacular of modern-day Israel, "Sephardi" has come to be used as an umbrella term for any Jewish person who is not Ashkenazi; Ashkenazim, who are descendants of Jews from Germany, Poland, Austria and Eastern Europe, have for several generations constituted the bulk of the world's Jewish population.
but i acknowledge that by a circumscribed, technical definition, the word is imprecise. i won't even get into the mizrahi.
I have found the Ashkenazi a polarized population. Some of the most racist and most liberal people have come from that population.
agreed. i wouldn't be here typing this or breathing if that were not true in both regards.
I know plenty of people who are not famous who do just fine not accepting the Black moniker.
awesome. anecdotal evidence means little to me. (i don't mean that harshly, but it doesn't). trends in population regarding equal opportunity means more to me; and regardless of the "people you know" who are cool with self-identifying, those people who have either self-identified or have been extrinsically identified as black are in dire straits--proportionately, i mean. but more power to all those who carved out a niche all their own. i mean it. more power, and much respect.
Agreed, and Howard Gregory Williams did not have the phenotype nor did he have a lot of discrimination.
Again, I respect your self-identification, but not because anyone else imposed it on you, but because that is the skin you feel comfortable in.
thank you, and i mean that sincerely. i wish i had imposed that skin, it would feel warmer.
i hope that you take my responses with the goodwill i intend; i love a good debate and the discourse of ideas.
i can only assume by the tone of your responses that you are non-white but not of african american descent.
Correct, I am of AfroLatino descent among other things.
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tiger himself believed it was because if his racial identity
Direct quote please.
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and i have thousands more (and more horrible) instances i can give you of behavior that, while not ratifying tiger's experience, certainly suggests that blacks have been the recipients of racial torture. shall i go into the james byrd case, the nyc groom just shot dead by police
Still under investigation. Ramming a police car is a serious claim.
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james meredith, the woman who drove her kids into the lake and blamed a black man
Yes, terrible and has nothing to do with tiger's identity
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darkening of oj
You'll have to explain that one.
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the katrina looters?
They were looting.
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please, your straw men lack a moral and historical compass.
Wrong again. They have both. What they lack is an attmpt of assuming a bias in my evaluation because of past wrongs.
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yes, trot out your singular examples hoping to "tit for tat" me on the cruelty of man against man, autonomous from racial prejudice. we do it on numbers, i bet i win. we do it on a continuum that can be discerned as having a racial correlary; i bet i win, too. it's a numbers game i wish i couldn't win, but this country's history since its inception virtually gaurantees that i will.
historically, yes. Current statistics per capita, no, actually you'd lose.
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and your invocation of post-9/11 racism is disingenuous and short sighted. that backlash was relatively short-lived; resulted in very few deaths (here at home at least, iraq is another story); and does not have 400 YEARS OF EMPIRICAL DATA behind it.
Still factual and still applies to Tiger who did not live for 400 years of YOUR INTERPRETATIONS.
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same for your equivocation regarding coolies. how long has chinese america suffered due to that burden? how many coolies (yeah, i hate the word too) were lynched? black people (whether you like to admit it or not) are still suffering after effects of slavery.
Actually, they are the after effects of Jim Crow. Many of the other countries had slavery till later but recuperated better. You only inherit stories from your parents. You still live your life only since you are born. Coolies lived and died in the same conditions as Blacks of their day. And many of them came from exploited families fleeing from other countries at times.
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when the asian american population has the illiteracy; incarceration; matriculation; and employment rates of african americans, i will concede your point as to the devastating, lingering affects of white against chinese racism.
Strawman. Tiger was well educated. And many of those caces are based on poverty and a mentality of pervasive defeatism that is a left over from jim Crow.
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oh yeah, conservative estimates place the death toll of africans brought to america during the slave trade at 30 million. that's conservative. now, again, how has the chinese population in america been irreparably wronged? i'll wait for your answer. you wanna use equivocation as a tool in an argument which relies on logic, you might want to stick with a syllogism which is tenable: like the effects of white racism on the native american. there, you might make some ground.
Nice try. Sorry, but numbers do not mean anyhting to me as we have yet to show oppression is carried in the genes. If ten people of European decent experienced the same, then those ten are equally comparable. And it was a lot more than 10.
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your point again, is a zero sum argument. this means... what? that a statistically negligible population who chose to identify as non-black, lived near whites. so? the upper east side is blocks away from harlem. i don't get your point.
Your point of claiming numerical superiority is what is laughable. The point that people did choose shows the claims of absoluteness are false. The simple fact creole populations existed in Louisiana also speak volumes. Sorry, but logic only needs one point of evidence, you can point one thousand occurrences where it didn't happen, I showed one where it did. For that individual it was reality.
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wrong, wrong, wrong. intrapopulational violence and living conditions? you act as though this is accidental, or worse, a sort of stasis. people in ghettos (black or white) do not live there because they want to. it is very difficult to escape economic vortices; and i defy you to give me numbers that suggest that white americans have the same amount of recidivism--whether economically, or criminally--as blacks in relation to their parent's generation. i have looked, and made a study of it. whites tend to be able to rise above their parent's station more easily than blacks. and no, black america does not get a pass. they are, by this part in our narrative, part of the problem.
Go look up statistics of Apalachia. And yes criminally the level in Black America is higher. A lot of that is based on a defeatism and hedonism that has set in. Where people prefer to live in the now because they despair that there is no future opportunities. But there are.
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But the nature of entitlement white skin brings is a tacit "lending a hand." Do you honestly not believe that white skin equals privilege? i can't believe that. i won't. how anyone born in this country could believe that is beyond the pale for me.
Wasn't born in this country, and I have seen pale skin people with as much lack of opportunities. So no, i do not think light skin automatically means privilege.
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i never said it was mental. i said that it was due to shared language and relatively insulated community; they often do not have to accept external interpretations because they have a culture (largely intact, in the form of music, language, ritual) that was denied africans during their INVOLUNTARY stay here. latinos came here of their own volition. that makes a huge difference, even 400 years later.
Tell that to the Gullahs. And most Latinos here are of Native American decent. They didn't choose to be conquered. It's still mental. It is based on perception of what is going on around you.
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actually, i do have epicanthic folds and many people mistook me for asian. (i don't see it, but hey).
Naw, you have oval eyes, but you don't come close to forming the full epicanthal fold.
Your father probably had some Native American in him.
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no experience of racism is analogous to black in america. other races have not been infantilized, degraded, and marginalized to the degree and scope of black america.
If you are speaking in the US and volume. Yes. individual experiences. No. And I don't buy into mass experiences except as to how an individual can relate to that knowledge.
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it would be like me going to the uk, and deciding that this whole southeast asian thing was "no big deal." nobody outside that country knows what it's like to be home grown and called a paki; and nobody who hasn't been here for generations knows what it means to be called a nigger--or have the power; whether used or not--to call someone one.
I would have compared it to the enslavement of the irish instead.
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and that poll doesn't address a lived reality. if i am "black" but don't look it or live the experience, am i? nope. i might be heir to the throne of england, but if i can't manifestly act on it, it's a worthless singifier. you are only passing if you are AWARE of the action. it is a conscious act. and please, enough with the melungeons and the lumbee and the isolate. i've told you specifically the context of any of my assertions; and their adherence to a mainstream black and white america. anecdotal/indigenous populations carry no graphic weight. (much love to the melungeons and the lumbee though!)
According to you no weight. According to me a ton. Like the Jackson Whites in NY. You should go visit them.
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uhh, sorry. partially incorrect. the commonly accepted (maybe not by you) definition of sephardic, or how the term is most often used in a real world context, in order to distinguish between jews of european and non-european descent is as follows, from wikipedia:
[i]In a broader sense, the term Sephardi has come to include Jews of Arabic and Persian backgrounds who have no historical connection to Iberia except their use of the Sephardic-style liturgy. For religious purposes, Jews of these communities are considered to be "Sephardim", meaning not "Spanish Jews" but "Jews of the Spanish rite". (In the same way, Ashkenazim means "Jews of the German rite", whether or not their families actually originate in Germany.) Accordingly, in the vernacular of modern-day Israel, "Sephardi" has come to be used as an umbrella term for any Jewish person who is not Ashkenazi; Ashkenazim, who are descendants of Jews from Germany, Poland, Austria and Eastern Europe, have for several generations constituted the bulk of the world's Jewish population.
Wrong. They are either Spanish jews or those that got adopted into their populations, thus the Spanish liturgy. If not they wouldnt have it in the first place. More like the bulk of the rich population.
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awesome. anecdotal evidence means little to me. (i don't mean that harshly, but it doesn't). trends in population regarding equal opportunity means more to me; and regardless of the "people you know" who are cool with self-identifying, those people who have either self-identified or have been extrinsically identified as black are in dire straits--proportionately, i mean. but more power to all those who carved out a niche all their own. i mean it. more power, and much respect.
Yes, when addressing major populations I agree, but people of major admixture have never been the majority and are singular cases, which is what we are discussing.
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i hope that you take my responses with the goodwill i intend; i love a good debate and the discourse of ideas.
Still under investigation. Ramming a police car is a serious claim.
one deserving of death?
Yes, terrible and has nothing to do with tiger's identity
actually, in terms of the argument of lived experience as relates to self-identification, entirely pertinent.
[i]You'll have to explain that one....They were looting.
time magazine famously darkened oj's features after he was (correctly) charged with killing his wife and ron goldman. they were forced to issue a public apology. as to the looters, they were identified as "looters" on the same day, and next to a picture of white "survivors," but BEFORE any determination of respective behavior had been identified. they weren't labelled as looters without a context other than skin. they weren't officially determined to be looters until after the picture had circulated. my point is that 2 very similar images were given two distinctly different meanings (regardless of the truth of those images) based on widely held prejudices. do you remember willie horton?
Wrong again. They have both. What they lack is an attmpt of assuming a bias in my evaluation because of past wrongs.
we will have to just disagree on the persistence of those wrongs as it applies to general african american history and continued existence; a history you have not lived, or apparently taken much pains to pursue with a comprehensive scholarship.
historically, yes. Current statistics per capita, no, actually you'd lose.
sir, you are patently incorrect. and that is an assessment beyond the particulars of whether i "agree" with you or not. please refer to the 2000 census, the cdc, and general earned income reports over the last decade. you have no numbers from any governmental reporting agencies which will back you up in terms of black, non-hispanic populations as it relates to income, disease or indicators of social mobility.
Still factual and still applies to Tiger who did not live for 400 years of YOUR INTERPRETATIONS.
actually, while factual, they are an equivocation, which is the main flaw in your method of argument (it's a common mistake or flaw in elementary logic). your assertions appear to be overt appeals to "reason" but substitute variables which only appear to have a syllogistic relationship, while upon closer inspection are not related. your assertion about 9/11 backlash does not have the scope or lasting resonance to be compared to an institution like slavery/racism. you have substituted a phenomena which lasted by all accounts a few months in terms of american history, for one which lasted centuries. the comparison is deeply flawed at best, odious at worst. and that is not subject to interpretation, unless you can show me the evidence that said backlash is still inhibiting the livelihoods, personal safety, or culture of muslims in america. and then again, even if you could provide any evidence of that (you can't, by the way) you would have to quantify this phenomena over time. like 400 years.
Actually, they are the after effects of Jim Crow. Many of the other countries had slavery till later but recuperated better. You only inherit stories from your parents. You still live your life only since you are born. Coolies lived and died in the same conditions as Blacks of their day. And many of them came from exploited families fleeing from other countries at times.
incorrect, or more generously, intellectually lazy. i will not go further into a historiographical explanation on slavery and white privilege as played out in america. it is facile to think that the psychopathology of race in america begins with birth. it is generational, part of the founding of this country. there was segregation (legal) until just over 40 years ago, and there is still segregation to this day. and i made my point not with a call to emotion as regards the coolies, but with a challenge for you to show me a demographic continuum backed up by indices of income, education, etc., which proved that chinese americans were impacted over GENERATIONS by their treatment as coolies in america. as long as your arguments contain false-start equivocations about peoples who CAME here, as opposed to people who were BROUGHT here, i fear that we will never find a common ground. i suppose that you believe that enough time has passed that collectively black america no longer harbors the effects of being brought here? or that they should have just gotten over it by now? that is a sentiment that i don't wholly disagree with, but a sentiment that i nonetheless recognize as being easier to foment if one is not a native born american.
Strawman. Tiger was well educated. And many of those caces are based on poverty and a mentality of pervasive defeatism that is a left over from jim Crow.
actually, it's not a straw-man. (i'm a logician, it's what i do, along with being a blowhard writer). check your terminology. i never mentioned nor conflated tiger's educational level as it pertains to his identity or experiences. and while many of these cases are built on remnants of jim crow, i think where we part ways is that you seem to believe that the expiration date for the latent remnants of a slave culture (which can be found in the structure of the welfare system) has passed, and that it's time for blacks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. a concept which i only partly agree with.
Naw, you have oval eyes, but you don't come close to forming the full epicanthal fold.
then you and i are looking at two different pix of me. in fact, if you have brooke kroeger's book, the first few lines of her description of me include a mention of the "epicanthic" folds of my eyes.
f you are speaking in the US and volume. Yes. individual experiences. No. And I don't buy into mass experiences except as to how an individual can relate to that knowledge.
too bad you don't buy into mass experience. for me, it is the only way to chart measurable social change. kind of like studying global warming. you've got to go to both poles; and you've got to keep going back and recording your data--otherwise all you've got is a couple of warm winters in a row.
I would have compared it to the enslavement of the irish instead.
[/i]
you would have, but i purposely didn't. that would have been an equivocation. i specifically chose a population of color, having been part of a white hegemony, who had also lived as second or third generation citizens. irish would have done me no good, and would have been a digression into class/religion as well, which would have been tangential.
According to you no weight. According to me a ton. Like the Jackson Whites in NY. You should go visit them.
nope. according to graphic statistical import. and i will make sure to visit them when i research tiny, indigenous cultures. (which i have to honestly admit that i may not get around to).
Wrong. They are either Spanish jews or those that got adopted into their populations, thus the Spanish liturgy. If not they wouldnt have it in the first place. More like the bulk of the rich population.
i am happy that you take pyrrhic victory in your "correct" definition of sephardic. it must pain you to know that most jews in america would "incorrectly" (by your stricltly limned definition) identify sephardim as any jews from a non-european background. that's irrespective of spanish liturgical convention. I will grant that your defintion is the "correct" one, but it's one which almost no one holds to the parameters of your defintion. i live in an entirely hasidic community, and border an entirely lubovitch one. according to these rather religous jews, sephardic has transcended its original meaning and includes any jews not from europe, excepting the mizrahi.
Yes, when addressing major populations I agree, but people of major admixture have never been the majority and are singular cases, which is what we are discussing.
i agree wholeheartedly, but i made pains to give a context for exactly what i was discussing; which was a biracial, of african american/white european admixture. and since people with even somewhat african features tend to be classified (to a.d. powell's horror) as black by the majority population; (is anyone going to try to argue that a caucasian phenotype is not recessive? that would be a fun exercise in futility) the black white pairing is the one with the most "legs" as we say in journalism.
Posted: Tue 23 Jan 2007 14:34 Post subject: David Matthews
Matthews and I have totally different experiences and mindsets. Almost everything he claims to be true about being white and of mixed ancestry, I have found to be false. I've posted several essays on the subject of mixed ancestry and white identity if he cares to read them. I don't limit my arguments to personal experience. If I did that I would say that, as a white among other whites, you are better off as white because it is safer - meaning that you get less harrassment from blacks - and you are free to express your cultural identity (which has everything in common with whites and nothing in common with blacks). I don't expect everyone to agree with me because their experiences and phenotypes are not the same as mine. I do demand respect for the legitimacy of the multiracial white experience and viewpoint as a whole. I do demand respect for those accused of "passing for white" - a respect Matthews would deny.
If you are successfully "passing" as "white" then you ARE "white." Matthews may renounce his own whiteness but he has no right to renounce it on behalf of others.
The historical question of who is currently responsible for the parroting of the "one drop" myth was made clear when the NAACP and the "black" American intelligentsia and political leadership united to stop the modest proposal to add a "multiracial" category to the census. The majority of the "white" media gave sympathetic coverage to the movement. The black media (and I include those "blacks" who write guest editorials and features for "white" publications) were nearly unanimous in condemning the movement with the usual name calling and calls for eternal loyalty in the face of a supposedly evil white enemy.
Matthews arguments have been repeated many times in "Interracial Voice" by supporters of the forced hypodescent he effectively advocates. All the writers for IV had to address their ridiculous arguments.
Matthews, like so many others we've encountered, creates a world in which "pure" and evil "whites" are demi-gods and those unfortunate to be tainted with the "inferior" blood of the race he claims to champion are eternally unworthy of the "honor" of their European or other non-black ancestry. How Latinos and Arabs manage to avoid this forced "black" identity from those evil "whites" when their "black blood" is so obvious is a mystery that the "one drop" advocates refuse to consider.
Posted: Tue 23 Jan 2007 14:39 Post subject: David Matthews
Oh, could Mr. Matthews at least adhere to some basic rules of grammar while posting? It is hard enough to follow his logic (or lack of it) but it would make things easier for us. (The pronoun "I" should be capitalized and letters that begin a sentence should be capitalized).
and the policeman before that. Yes, that could constitute a valid self defense
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actually, in terms of the argument of lived experience as relates to self-identification, entirely pertinent.
Not at all. Tiger was not falsely accused of anything.
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time magazine famously darkened oj's features after he was (correctly) charged with killing his wife and ron goldman. they were forced to issue a public apology.
Ah ok.
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as to the looters, they were identified as "looters" on the same day, and next to a picture of white "survivors," but BEFORE any determination of respective behavior had been identified. they weren't labelled as looters without a context other than skin. they weren't officially determined to be looters until after the picture had circulated. my point is that 2 very similar images were given two distinctly different meanings (regardless of the truth of those images) based on widely held prejudices. do you remember willie horton?
Don't know who willy horton is. I do know I saw pictures of white people leavin the stores with supplies, as well as some black people. But I also saw pictures of Black people with stack loads of cases of beer and a big grin on their face. The first two, survivors, the last ones, looters.
I don't think Roca Wear was a survival necessity either.
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we will have to just disagree on the persistence of those wrongs as it applies to general african american history and continued existence; a history you have not lived, or apparently taken much pains to pursue with a comprehensive scholarship.
Wrong again. I studied them intensively during college. I just keep those effects in context and realize when the current situations are wounds from the past versus current wounds.
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sir, you are patently incorrect. and that is an assessment beyond the particulars of whether i "agree" with you or not. please refer to the 2000 census, the cdc, and general earned income reports over the last decade. you have no numbers from any governmental reporting agencies which will back you up in terms of black, non-hispanic populations as it relates to income, disease or indicators of social mobility.
Was speaking to criminality. cruelty of man against man. Social inequality is left overs of prior history of man against man.
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actually, while factual, they are an equivocation, which is the main flaw in your method of argument (it's a common mistake or flaw in elementary logic).
Nice try. There is no flaw in my argument. You just don't like the variables I present. The fact still remains that people have been confused and harrased for looking like something they were not. And they did not accept the identity imposition. 400 years of your claim of empirical data are incorrect as imposed identification by one droppism does not occur heavily until Jim Crow. Please refer to these essays:
http://backintyme.com/essay060401.htm
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your assertions appear to be overt appeals to "reason" but substitute variables which only appear to have a syllogistic relationship, while upon closer inspection are not related.
Again, nice try. You claimed that assumption/mistaken identity and harassment led to imposed identity. I showed how there were cases that did not happen. It is your attempts at syllogism that were flawed. Some men are harassed for looking like another population and some take on that identity therefore all people who are harassed from looking like a population will adopt the identity. A flawed categorical syllogism..
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your assertion about 9/11 backlash does not have the scope or lasting resonance to be compared to an institution like slavery/racism.
When it comes to imposed identity, it is equally as valid. Not all Afrodesent people were exposed to the same level of hypodescent during Jim Crow, and One Droppism did not occur during the slave era. And finally, one does not carry over the experiences and molding of their ancestors except in the tales of their parents and elders. These do not always affect how the young percieve things, and especially not when the values of a second family system also come into play.
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you have substituted a phenomena which lasted by all accounts a few months in terms of american history, for one which lasted centuries.
Feel free to show your centuries in one person's life. And again, that imposition was successful for many during Jim Crow does not make it right for those in the present where rule of law no longer exists and the variable is just the same as that of those Sikhs. Furthermore, we could also add historical examples of the natives being categorized as mulatto and vice versa. Does not mean they were so.
Quote:
the comparison is deeply flawed at best, odious at worst.
In your biased opinion.
Quote:
and that is not subject to interpretation, unless you can show me the evidence that said backlash is still inhibiting the livelihoods, personal safety, or culture of muslims in america. and then again, even if you could provide any evidence of that (you can't, by the way) you would have to quantify this phenomena over time. like 400 years.
incorrect, or more generously, intellectually lazy.
Nice try. Only one being lazy is yourself going by your conventional wisdoms.
Feel free to read Coolies and Cane by Moon-Ho Jung.
Quote:
i will not go further into a historiographical explanation on slavery and white privilege as played out in america.
As coolies came in after slavery and my comparison was with thse living concurrently with them, your's is a nice strawman.
Quote:
it is facile to think that the psychopathology of race in america begins with birth.
Culturally, no, but ingraining in a child yes, and only those events occuring in that childhood will mark him.
Quote:
it is generational, part of the founding of this country. there was segregation (legal) until just over 40 years ago, and there is still segregation to this day.
No there isn't. There is discrimination, but no legal segregation. Voluntary segregation is not imposed. And again, generational damage is only limited to exposure to the elders. If Jim Crow hadn't occurred and all the reprisals hadn't occurred, we wouldn't be in this situation today no matter what happened three generations before.
Quote:
and i made my point not with a call to emotion as regards the coolies, but with a challenge for you to show me a demographic continuum backed up by indices of income, education, etc., which proved that chinese americans were impacted over GENERATIONS by their treatment as coolies in america.
Nice strawman. As stated before, only two generations important the youth and the elders still alive to influence the youth. Coolies were able to overcome many of their challenges because they had a strong communal culture. Jim Crow was similarly harsh for them. But less occurrences of dashed hopes and betrayals like the Tulsa burnings.
Jim Crow did go against them as well though.
Enacted 17 Jim Crow laws between 1866 and 1947 in the areas of miscegenation (6) and education (2), employment (1) and a residential ordinance passed by the city of San Francisco that required all Chinese inhabitants to live in one area of the city. Four voting restriction laws were passed that targeted foreign born inhabitants, particularly the Chinese. Although school segregation was banned by 1880, this law was overturned in 1902, and included Asian children as candidates for separate schools. Similarly, a miscegenation law passed in 1901 broadened an 1850 law, adding that it was unlawful for white persons to marry "Mongolians." The legislation reflects the dominant society's growing anxiety over the steady numbers of Asians immigrating to California by the early twentieth century. An 1893 statute barred public accommodation segregation, with seven additional civil rights laws passed by 1955.
In fact, some of the Indians from South India adopted the Black identity in places like Louisiana as they saw common cause. Others did not.
Quote:
as long as your arguments contain false-start equivocations about peoples who CAME here, as opposed to people who were BROUGHT here, i fear that we will never find a common ground.
Nice try again. People who came here in indentured servitude, still came many times because of false promises. So seduced or captured, they still ended up here under harsh conditions.
Quote:
i suppose that you believe that enough time has passed that collectively black america no longer harbors the effects of being brought here?
Effects? Only in so much as Jim Crow allowed those effect to carry ovr and further internalize.
Quote:
or that they should have just gotten over it by now?
Gotten over, no, Use it as a crutch, yes.
Quote:
that is a sentiment that i don't wholly disagree with, but a sentiment that i nonetheless recognize as being easier to foment if one is not a native born american.
Yes, because we can be more impartial.
Quote:
actually, it's not a straw-man. (i'm a logician, it's what i do, along with being a blowhard writer).
Writers use subjective language to try to influence their readers. I also deal in facts and logic in the legal field.
Quote:
check your terminology. i never mentioned nor conflated tiger's educational level as it pertains to his identity or experiences.
You claimed that because asians did not have the same levels of poverty and illiteracy their discrimination wasn't equivalent. As the Asian reference was based on the claim Tiger couldn't be discriminated because of his Asianess, it is quite relevant and you did conflate the two thus presenting a strawman argument. Poverty and illiteracy in the Black community compared to the Asian community are irrelevant to the possibility of Tiger being discriminated for looking south asian.
Quote:
That and while many of these cases are built on remnants of jim crow, i think where we part ways is that you seem to believe that the expiration date for the latent remnants of a slave culture (which can be found in the structure of the welfare system) has passed, and that it's time for blacks to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. a concept which i only partly agree with.
The welfare system is a Jim Crow occurrence, not slavery. And yes, autodetermination does have to play a role. I give you Okey Chigbo to read.
Reading, writing and racism
Quote:
then you and i are looking at two different pix of me. in fact, if you have brooke kroeger's book, the first few lines of her description of me include a mention of the "epicanthic" folds of my eyes.
No, same picture. Kroeger is no expert on epicanthic folds. Note the picture I posted to you. Your-s does not fold over anywhere near the inner corner of your eye socket.
n epicanthal fold, epicanthic fold, internal fold or epicanthus is a skin fold of the upper eyelid (from the nose to the inner side of the eyebrow) covering the inner corner (medial canthus) of the human eye.
What you have is a case of drooping eye crease.
It can be genetically linked to an epicanthic fold and a sub developed one start of one (your case) and is sometimes referred to as a double eyelid.
Note this guy had a case of epicanthic fols in bith eyes but double eyelid in only one.
Quote:
too bad you don't buy into mass experience. for me, it is the only way to chart measurable social change. kind of like studying global warming. you've got to go to both poles; and you've got to keep going back and recording your data--otherwise all you've got is a couple of warm winters in a row.
Yes, as far as studying social change and mass cultural identification, socology, but not as to self identity in relationship to social bombardment, social psychology. I studied them both.
Quote:
you would have, but i purposely didn't. that would have been an equivocation. i specifically chose a population of color, having been part of a white hegemony, who had also lived as second or third generation citizens. irish would have done me no good, and would have been a digression into class/religion as well, which would have been tangential.
They would have been valid as a comparison but not as an intra-continental US one.
Quote:
nope. according to graphic statistical import. and i will make sure to visit them when i research tiny, indigenous cultures. (which i have to honestly admit that i may not get around to).
Again, sociology vs social psychology. As individuals, each person is unique and the opportunities did exist in the cultures to choose to identify. That Jim Crow changed that does not mean non black, non white societies didn't exist. That multiracial Whites didn't exist and that they all disappeared with the enactment of Southern Jim Crow laws.
Quote:
i am happy that you take pyrrhic victory in your "correct" definition of sephardic. it must pain you to know that most jews in america would "incorrectly" (by your stricltly limned definition) identify sephardim as any jews from a non-european background. that's irrespective of spanish liturgical convention. I will grant that your defintion is the "correct" one, but it's one which almost no one holds to the parameters of your defintion. i live in an entirely hasidic community, and border an entirely lubovitch one. according to these rather religous jews, sephardic has transcended its original meaning and includes any jews not from europe, excepting the mizrahi.
Maybe so as far as broad terminologies applied by the Ashkenazi. But the true descendants of Sephardi would not agree. I also highly doubt the Beta Israel or Kaifeng Jews are refered to as Sephardic.
Quote:
i agree wholeheartedly, but i made pains to give a context for exactly what i was discussing; which was a biracial, of african american/white european admixture. and since people with even somewhat african features tend to be classified (to a.d. powell's horror) as black by the majority population; (is anyone going to try to argue that a caucasian phenotype is not recessive? that would be a fun exercise in futility) the black white pairing is the one with the most "legs" as we say in journalism.
Again, majority shmority. depends on the region.
Disclosing Multiraciality by region
And again experience is a personal thing, not a national average.
No. It is Sephardic jews who moved to those regions who are called Sephardic. Jews who never were in Spain are never called Sephardic.
This is off-topic, but David is correct in saying that the term "Sephardic" is currently applied to non-Ashkenazi Jews who may not be of Spanish descent. The large community of Sephardic Jews in Montreal, for example, are so-called Mizrahi Jews from North Africa or the Middle East, but they refer to themselves as Sephardi.
Yeah some call those that follow the Spanish Liturgy Sephardi, but not all that are not Ashkenazi are Sephardi. The Beta Israel for example.
Posted: Tue 23 Jan 2007 16:41 Post subject: Re: David Matthews
Powell wrote:
Matthews and I have totally different experiences and mindsets. Almost everything he claims to be true about being white and of mixed ancestry, I have found to be false. I've posted several essays on the subject of mixed ancestry and white identity if he cares to read them. I don't limit my arguments to personal experience. If I did that I would say that, as a white among other whites, you are better off as white because it is safer - meaning that you get less harrassment from blacks - and you are free to express your cultural identity (which has everything in common with whites and nothing in common with blacks). I don't expect everyone to agree with me because their experiences and phenotypes are not the same as mine.
Agreed till here.
Quote:
I do demand respect for the legitimacy of the multiracial white experience and viewpoint as a whole. I do demand respect for those accused of "passing for white" - a respect Matthews would deny.
I disagree that he would deny it per se. But he is in the mistaken beleif that the majority never have a choice. And that imposition is too strong and somehow plays plays a larger role and thus validates that imposition.
But then again, AD, you have been guilty of trying to deny light skinned people their right to identify as black if they so chose.
Quote:
If you are successfully "passing" as "white" then you ARE "white."
No, that is not true. If you are a mixed white, you aren't passing in the first place. If you feel you are passing, no matter how succesfully, then your identity ideation is not congruent with your passing.
Quote:
Matthews may renounce his own whiteness but he has no right to renounce it on behalf of others.
Seems he may have never fully embraced it. Or maybe he did and changed his mind. Still not sure n that. No one should tell another what they should embrace over their own primary ideation. But self delusion after growing up all one's life fully accepting an identity can be exasperating. Like when someone finds out they are mixed and claim they found out they were Black.
Quote:
Matthews arguments have been repeated many times in "Interracial Voice" by supporters of the forced hypodescent he effectively advocates. All the writers for IV had to address their ridiculous arguments.
Matthews, like so many others we've encountered, creates a world in which "pure" and evil "whites" are demi-gods and those unfortunate to be tainted with the "inferior" blood of the race he claims to champion are eternally unworthy of the "honor" of their European or other non-black ancestry. How Latinos and Arabs manage to avoid this forced "black" identity from those evil "whites" when their "black blood" is so obvious is a mystery that the "one drop" advocates refuse to consider.
Address his claims, not a stereotype of who he is with the unneeded sarcasm and ad hominem innuendo. If you want to address a specific claim he has made with a specific article you have written, go right ahead, but this vague, "I have dealt with others such as you before" posturing is uncalled for.
Nice posts. Nowadays, you are what you look like and say you are.
I knew a Creole girl in LA (mixed, beige, green eyes, sandy hair) who attended a David Duke Rally a few years ago (2000+) and was probably looked at, but no one said anything to her. She was not 'run off' either. She is obviously 'not quite all White' too. So much for the evil racist rejecting Whites, eh?
David, IMO, at 40, you are too young to be so dismal about race relations in the US, even if you did live in a segregated area. Where you ever denied the front seat of the bus, made to get food from a kitchen, called 'Boy' or 'Nigger' daily? Spat on, called monkey, denied housing, denied jobs, etc. If you cannot answer yes to most, you trully haven't experienced the worse racism this country had to offer. I see and know of so many Black people who just cannot life their lifes. They are still bitter about the past. In their minds, race is always an issue for others, because race is always an issue for them.
Forgive me, but I respectfully think that you are living in the past/dwell on the worst, and that it has colored your view (no pun intened) .
I am 35 and have faced racism from Whites, Asians, Hispanics, Indians, and Blacks. No, a White mother does not/did not save me from White racism, but I am what I am what I am. No apologies, no excuses.
I am a female so, that has been particularly bad from self-hating Black females. I'm sure you understand.....but if I could add it all up, the worst -ism for me has been SEXISM, but I am still hetero..... In your 'Strong Black Man' identity, just don't reject yourself....
Yeah, you had to pull 'An Imitation of Life', but don't let guilt determine your life. Honestly, unless one is of 'dark sub-saharan type' one will benefit from 'white/light privledge' and I don't mean your 'passing' years. I have benefitted and I look 'Black'. But, I too have remained silent sometimes, but this is the hand we all have been delt.... There are/have been alot of injustices against Blacks, but alot is self-inflicted now. I could gather data from any oppressed people on this planet, but it would make no difference - people are cruel to those who are 'different' and Black people are not a 'special case'. Many peoples of color, even Whites, have faced cruel mistreatement for whatever reason. That is life and we are not alone...... You're just 'down for the cause' (i.e Wiliams, D. Sensa, Halle, yvette, etc).
Things are improving, but there will ALWAYS be racism. Alot of your examles depict ethnic Whites who IMO, are often much more racist and overt about it than WASPS. They have nothin' to prove, lol. You don't have anything to prove either, not to anyone but yourself. And as I can attest from personal experience, with both Whites and Blacks, such efforts are largely wasted.
I have never overtly denied being mixed nor 'Black', but people will know that my preference is mixed. Now, that will ruffle feathers admongst many White and Black Americans, but that is the truth. It may even be dismissed on occasion, but most haven't had the balls to banter it. Freedom lies not in acquiesing, nor in facing reality, but in being true to yourself. My decison has been made too and it is final.
Just curious, I do not have Black on my birth certificate, what does your say David?
Do you really think these daughters are considered 'just Blacks'? Lying eyes indeed.
Posted: Tue 23 Jan 2007 22:27 Post subject: to melani 23
ok, first of all, thanks. second, and totally off topic. i am in love with the mother daughter(?) combo in the top picture, and any way you could facilitate an introduction to either would be most appreciated
ok, but on to your points:
i apologize if i come off as bitter. i am a polemicist, very much in the vein of Baldwin, Gates, Hitchens, et al. i like to stir the pot. i like to remind people that racism is not "over." you would be surprised how many people have said those words to me during the course of my book publication. hundreds. i am not in the least "embittered." what spurs me to action, gets me out of bed, is the desire to wake people up to a reality that is always bubbling under the surface, but rarely (these days) talked about. when katrina happened, the world (especially europe, who saw the government's abject negligence for what it was, passive racism) was jolted awake. there was lots of "how could this happen here?"
things like that, and the manipulation by the republican party of evangelical blacks--the black vote actually turned the 04 election, without it, kerry would have won--into voting for a party with its worst interests at heart--anger and frighten me. a population which suffers disproportionately by dint of programs like "no child left behind" actually voted for the people who would do them harm.
i am scared. black america is in worse shape than it's been in since the end of the civil rights movement. there are many self-defeating reasons for that. hell, i"m not happy that idiots like tupac and oj are heroes in the black community. but i also feel that governmental policies allow black people to remain in a sort of stasis. it's like ehtanol: there is NO REASON why this country should not switch to ethanol and be free of foreign oil in the next few years. there is NO REASON why this government should not offer poor people college vouchers, universal health care, and heightened inducements for teachers in public schools. i see a conspiracy there--one a will broaden to include poor people of all races. BUT... since african americans are suffering at a widely disproportionate rate, from poverty and all the ills that come with it, my first line of defense is with them.
so, the more complacent america gets, the more they think that things are "better now," the more i want to turn up the debate to 11, really get people to question their beliefs. and as always, i hope i am wrong on the state of (especially) black america, but the more i read, the more i see, the more i write, the more that seems unlikely.
thanks again for your post--you still in the easy? things any better down there?
On your last post I would agree. The rich are trying to stay rich and their biggest concern is not oppressing or uplifting, but what will make them more money.
sin wrote: Quote:
But then again, AD, you have been guilty of trying to deny light skinned people their right to identify as black if they so chose.
Agreed. (To paraphrase Orwell: "Some are more equal than others..")
Salsassin and Triguy are both guilty of a rule violation:
Quote:
3a
Do not attribute motives to them. Do not try to ridicule them.
Actually what power do I have to deny anyone their "right" to be "black"?
This accusation usually arises when I point out that Gregory Howard Williams and his ilk are not truthful when they claim that they had "no choice" but to be "black." They then whine that I or "the multiracial police" are trying to deprive them of the "choice" they claim they never had. Williams, Matthews and others like them DO have the POWER to deny white and other nonblack identities to others because they are actively promoted as role models by the liberal and black media. Kids who are trying to decide on their identities will be told that they have no choice. That is why any dissent must be silenced, right?
Posted: Wed 24 Jan 2007 01:25 Post subject: Shades of Gray
Ok. This woman, unlike Matthews, grew up in a loving white-identified Jewish family, finds out at 18 that her biological father was "black," and decides to run with a "black" identity. What is "black" or "African American" again? There is no logic here.
Quote:
january / february 2007:
Shades of Gray
Lacey Schwartz had the typical middle-class Jewish upbringing in upstate New York. Until her 18th birthday when her mom told her she was the product of an affair with a black man. Now Lacey is making a documentary about her newfound life as a black Jew.
The problem was the boxes on her college application. The ones where you check white or black. Lacey Schwartz didn't know which to check, so she sent a picture instead, which led the school administrators to enroll her as a black student, one who inexplicably had two white Jewish parents. That’s how she made it 18 years before blowing the lid off the family secret: That her mother had an affair with a black man, that she was the product of their union.
In a certain sense, the boxes still haunt a 30-year-old Lacey now a Harvard-educated lawyer and successful film producer in New York City. American culture seeks to compartmentalize people, she tells me during a discussion of her work-in-progress documentary about black Jews in America.
Before meeting her, I had loaded the trailer for her film “Outside the Box” onto my computer and watched a montage of black Jews interspersed with footage of Lacey, whose personal story narrates the movie. “Black Jews are caught between two often conflicting worlds,” a caption states. On camera, a black man describes the challenge of explaining his religion: “Jewish means white,” he declares.
All her life, Lacey’s race has similarly conferred insider or outsider status on her. Tonight, at one of her favorite wine bars in the East Village, I take in her perfectly chic, downtown look, complete with gold earrings and a fur vest, as she assesses a predominantly white crowd. But she feels like an outsider.
Though finely attuned to the color of her skin, Lacey Schwartz Schwartz, she reiterates was raised in ignorant bliss in Woodstock, N.Y. The only child of her fair-skinned parents, she describes a sort of upbringing as iconic as any other American Jewish kid raised during the 1980s, complete with Hebrew school, a bat mitzvah, youth group, even her parents’ separation at age 15. “I was a nice Jewish girl in upstate New York,” she says, lapsing into a kind of East Coast Jewish whine.
Remarkably, no one in her family discussed Lacey’s dark skin and distinctively curly hair, nor did they acknowledge she was biracial. “People go day to day, and don’t talk about things,” she says, knowing well from experience.
But while Lacey’s family ignored the obvious, not everyone else did. When she was five, a boy in the nursery school playground insisted on checking the color of her gums to determine whether she was white or black. As a teen, black girls ostracized her. Whenever people questioned her identity, “I always said I was Jewish,” she says. Looking back, Lacey identifies herself as an interloper in a game of “which one of these things doesn’t belong.”
After Lacey’s first year of college at Georgetown University, however, she confronted reality and her mother. “Do you ever wonder why I look the way I do?” she asked. For two weeks, her mother stalled. Finally Lacey demanded: “Is Daddy my real father?” She says she was more relieved to know the truth than actually shocked.
Her experience at Georgetown until that point was influential as she questioned her race. Her registration papers there labeled her a “black/Hispanic origins” student. And Lacey joined the black theater group and student association, fell in step with the black students’ clique, and dated black and biracial men.
Seemingly overnight, she had retreated from the Jewish community she grew up in. Her upbringing wasn’t particularly religious anyway, and the myopic view of some Jews she met around that time offended her. In law school in particular, colleagues didn’t hide their shock when they learned she was black and Jewish, and “How could that be?”
In what would become an ongoing process, Lacey balanced multiple worlds: her many different friends, her white Jewish family, and the strong sense of comfort she felt as a black woman more so than a white one. “It is strange for me to be around your family, because they are all white,” a black boyfriend exclaimed once after meeting her relatives. “You don’t think I understand that and feel that way, too? But they are my family,” she replied.
But if there is one goal in Lacey’s immediate future, it is talking to her dad. Not her biological one, but the one who raised her. To this day, she has never discussed with him the fact that he is not her biological father.
Initially, she says she wasn’t ready to deal with the fallout. And so, besides her film’s compelling footage (which earned a 2006 Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award), Lacey’s desire is twofold: to tell the untold story of black Jews in America, and to plumb the nature of her own identity.
The latter is the harder of the two. Specifically, the “emotional work” is more challenging even than taping intimate therapy sessions she attends with her mother. But she is preparing to “come out of the closet” with her family, and her father.
Georgetown may have guessed 12 years ago based on a snapshot. But Lacey wants out of the box.
3a
Do not attribute motives to them. Do not try to ridicule them.
Actually what power do I have to deny anyone their "right" to be "black"?
This accusation usually arises when I point out that Gregory Howard Williams and his ilk are not truthful when they claim that they had "no choice" but to be "black." They then whine that I or "the multiracial police" are trying to deprive them of the "choice" they claim they never had. Williams, Matthews and others like them DO have the POWER to deny white and other nonblack identities to others because they are actively promoted as role models by the liberal and black media. Kids who are trying to decide on their identities will be told that they have no choice. That is why any dissent must be silenced, right?
They have as much power as you do. And they have as much right to talk of their experiences as do you. And your ridiculing him when he is now a member is a violation of the rules. But as usual, you think you are beyond them. So I don't follow them either until you learn to do so. I will debate him on his beliefs as well, but I won't insult him or stereotype him. I can't stand hypocricy.
Posted: Wed 24 Jan 2007 01:59 Post subject: Re: Shades of Gray
Powell wrote:
Ok. This woman, unlike Matthews, grew up in a loving white-identified Jewish family, finds out at 18 that her biological father was "black," and decides to run with a "black" identity. What is "black" or "African American" again? There is no logic here.
Quote:
january / february 2007:
Shades of Gray
Lacey Schwartz had the typical middle-class Jewish upbringing in upstate New York. Until her 18th birthday when her mom told her she was the product of an affair with a black man. Now Lacey is making a documentary about her newfound life as a black Jew.
The problem was the boxes on her college application. The ones where you check white or black. Lacey Schwartz didn't know which to check, so she sent a picture instead, which led the school administrators to enroll her as a black student, one who inexplicably had two white Jewish parents. That’s how she made it 18 years before blowing the lid off the family secret: That her mother had an affair with a black man, that she was the product of their union.
In a certain sense, the boxes still haunt a 30-year-old Lacey now a Harvard-educated lawyer and successful film producer in New York City. American culture seeks to compartmentalize people, she tells me during a discussion of her work-in-progress documentary about black Jews in America.
Before meeting her, I had loaded the trailer for her film “Outside the Box” onto my computer and watched a montage of black Jews interspersed with footage of Lacey, whose personal story narrates the movie. “Black Jews are caught between two often conflicting worlds,” a caption states. On camera, a black man describes the challenge of explaining his religion: “Jewish means white,” he declares.
All her life, Lacey’s race has similarly conferred insider or outsider status on her. Tonight, at one of her favorite wine bars in the East Village, I take in her perfectly chic, downtown look, complete with gold earrings and a fur vest, as she assesses a predominantly white crowd. But she feels like an outsider.
Though finely attuned to the color of her skin, Lacey Schwartz Schwartz, she reiterates was raised in ignorant bliss in Woodstock, N.Y. The only child of her fair-skinned parents, she describes a sort of upbringing as iconic as any other American Jewish kid raised during the 1980s, complete with Hebrew school, a bat mitzvah, youth group, even her parents’ separation at age 15. “I was a nice Jewish girl in upstate New York,” she says, lapsing into a kind of East Coast Jewish whine.
Remarkably, no one in her family discussed Lacey’s dark skin and distinctively curly hair, nor did they acknowledge she was biracial. “People go day to day, and don’t talk about things,” she says, knowing well from experience.
But while Lacey’s family ignored the obvious, not everyone else did. When she was five, a boy in the nursery school playground insisted on checking the color of her gums to determine whether she was white or black. As a teen, black girls ostracized her. Whenever people questioned her identity, “I always said I was Jewish,” she says. Looking back, Lacey identifies herself as an interloper in a game of “which one of these things doesn’t belong.”
After Lacey’s first year of college at Georgetown University, however, she confronted reality and her mother. “Do you ever wonder why I look the way I do?” she asked. For two weeks, her mother stalled. Finally Lacey demanded: “Is Daddy my real father?” She says she was more relieved to know the truth than actually shocked.
Her experience at Georgetown until that point was influential as she questioned her race. Her registration papers there labeled her a “black/Hispanic origins” student. And Lacey joined the black theater group and student association, fell in step with the black students’ clique, and dated black and biracial men.
Seemingly overnight, she had retreated from the Jewish community she grew up in. Her upbringing wasn’t particularly religious anyway, and the myopic view of some Jews she met around that time offended her. In law school in particular, colleagues didn’t hide their shock when they learned she was black and Jewish, and “How could that be?”
In what would become an ongoing process, Lacey balanced multiple worlds: her many different friends, her white Jewish family, and the strong sense of comfort she felt as a black woman more so than a white one. “It is strange for me to be around your family, because they are all white,” a black boyfriend exclaimed once after meeting her relatives. “You don’t think I understand that and feel that way, too? But they are my family,” she replied.
But if there is one goal in Lacey’s immediate future, it is talking to her dad. Not her biological one, but the one who raised her. To this day, she has never discussed with him the fact that he is not her biological father.
Initially, she says she wasn’t ready to deal with the fallout. And so, besides her film’s compelling footage (which earned a 2006 Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award), Lacey’s desire is twofold: to tell the untold story of black Jews in America, and to plumb the nature of her own identity.
The latter is the harder of the two. Specifically, the “emotional work” is more challenging even than taping intimate therapy sessions she attends with her mother. But she is preparing to “come out of the closet” with her family, and her father.
Georgetown may have guessed 12 years ago based on a snapshot. But Lacey wants out of the box.
She is exploring the side of her identity she was denied. She still says she is a Black Jew. Not just Black, not just Jew. SO what is the problem?
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and many people mistook me for asian. (i don't see it, but hey). no experience of racism is analogous to black in america. other races have not been infantilized, degraded, and marginalized to the degree and scope of black america. it would be like me going to the uk, and deciding that this whole southeast asian thing was "no big deal." nobody outside that country knows what it's like to be home grown and called a paki; and nobody who hasn't been here for generations knows what it means to be called a nigger--or have the power; whether used or not--to call someone one.
a few years ago (2000+) and was probably looked at, but no one said anything to her. She was not 'run off' either. She is obviously 'not quite all White' too. So much for the evil racist rejecting Whites, eh? 
.
