I definitely agree with your paragraph that begins “Definitely agree...”
In your opening paragraphs you put your finger on a serious point: not what is a race, but who is a race. European colonists in America at the end of the 18th Century invented a convenient way of thinking about race: a color code. White, Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow…
I definitely agree with your paragraph that begins “Definitely agree...”
In your opening paragraphs you put your finger on a serious point: not what is a race, but who is a race. European colonists in America at the end of the 18th Century invented a convenient way of thinking about race: a color code. White, Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow. Whites to own property and dominate the others, Black slaves to grow and harvest cotton, Brown to defeat and grab their land, Red to slaughter and grab their land, and later, Yellow to build the Transcontinental Railroad (and refuse to leave). It was convenient for the non-Black settlers to identify, but it took a while: Italians and Swedes were considered “swarthy races” and Irish were “degraded,” until they were needed to increase the political and economic power of the dominant class.
The problem arises when we try to apply trivial biological differences. (skin color, head shape, and so on) to the rest of the world, most countries of which do not impose racial color codes on the people around them. Uighur is not a race, nor is Filipino, nor is Han, nor do they think of themselves as races. The Japanese did not attack Pearl Harbor because Americans were white but to establish a Japanese empire. James Baldwin recognized the difference between foreign and domestic “races” when he wrote, “the Negro is a race that exists only in America,” backing up our agreement that race is a social invention. If every oppressive deed were racist, we’d have no need for the word.
Now to your “come on” paragraph. I think you have the wrong end of the stick. It’s white supremacy that automatically creates racism, not the other way around. Individual persons are not the issue; it’s the system of white supremacy that shapes the acts and opinions of a people. Racism doesn’t arise spontaneously; children are not automatically racist; they have to be taught by their families, teachers, friends, etc., Or they read
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who declared:
"I think it cannot be maintained by any candid person that the African race have ever occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very high place in the human family. The Irish cannot; the American Indian cannot; the Chinese cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race all the other races have quailed and done obeisance." That’s white supremacy and racism all rolled together, defining American thought for two centuries, beginning with Jefferson’s authoritative definition of Black people as inferior in every way. Europeans who had been slaughtering each other for centuries gradually came together under the white umbrella when they immigrated to America, in order to distinguish themselves from the non-white people who already lived there, particularly Black slaves, whom they bought in American slave markets.
“White Emotion.” I came up with that term because I considered race and racism to be too rigid and at the same time too flexible. Too flexible because the charge of racism gets applied to everything from schoolchild taunting to the murder of George Floyd, too rigid because it takes no account of context. A child’s microaggression is one thing, the KKK’s aggression entirely another. I use “white” because not all whites are racist, but most all racists are white. “Emotion” for its ability to shapeshift, influence people’s feelings and acts, and persevere despite the nonexistence of race in the physical world. This spectrum of emotions is what I mean by the “white emotion.”
Further, the white emotion requires the reader to define what kind of racist act has been committed. Grand Theft Racism? Staring oddly at a Black colleague’s new hairdo? Individuals do not create racism, systems do.
I definitely agree with your paragraph that begins “Definitely agree...”
In your opening paragraphs you put your finger on a serious point: not what is a race, but who is a race. European colonists in America at the end of the 18th Century invented a convenient way of thinking about race: a color code. White, Black, Brown, Red, and Yellow. Whites to own property and dominate the others, Black slaves to grow and harvest cotton, Brown to defeat and grab their land, Red to slaughter and grab their land, and later, Yellow to build the Transcontinental Railroad (and refuse to leave). It was convenient for the non-Black settlers to identify, but it took a while: Italians and Swedes were considered “swarthy races” and Irish were “degraded,” until they were needed to increase the political and economic power of the dominant class.
The problem arises when we try to apply trivial biological differences. (skin color, head shape, and so on) to the rest of the world, most countries of which do not impose racial color codes on the people around them. Uighur is not a race, nor is Filipino, nor is Han, nor do they think of themselves as races. The Japanese did not attack Pearl Harbor because Americans were white but to establish a Japanese empire. James Baldwin recognized the difference between foreign and domestic “races” when he wrote, “the Negro is a race that exists only in America,” backing up our agreement that race is a social invention. If every oppressive deed were racist, we’d have no need for the word.
Now to your “come on” paragraph. I think you have the wrong end of the stick. It’s white supremacy that automatically creates racism, not the other way around. Individual persons are not the issue; it’s the system of white supremacy that shapes the acts and opinions of a people. Racism doesn’t arise spontaneously; children are not automatically racist; they have to be taught by their families, teachers, friends, etc., Or they read
Ralph Waldo Emerson, who declared:
"I think it cannot be maintained by any candid person that the African race have ever occupied or do promise ever to occupy any very high place in the human family. The Irish cannot; the American Indian cannot; the Chinese cannot. Before the energy of the Caucasian race all the other races have quailed and done obeisance." That’s white supremacy and racism all rolled together, defining American thought for two centuries, beginning with Jefferson’s authoritative definition of Black people as inferior in every way. Europeans who had been slaughtering each other for centuries gradually came together under the white umbrella when they immigrated to America, in order to distinguish themselves from the non-white people who already lived there, particularly Black slaves, whom they bought in American slave markets.
“White Emotion.” I came up with that term because I considered race and racism to be too rigid and at the same time too flexible. Too flexible because the charge of racism gets applied to everything from schoolchild taunting to the murder of George Floyd, too rigid because it takes no account of context. A child’s microaggression is one thing, the KKK’s aggression entirely another. I use “white” because not all whites are racist, but most all racists are white. “Emotion” for its ability to shapeshift, influence people’s feelings and acts, and persevere despite the nonexistence of race in the physical world. This spectrum of emotions is what I mean by the “white emotion.”
Further, the white emotion requires the reader to define what kind of racist act has been committed. Grand Theft Racism? Staring oddly at a Black colleague’s new hairdo? Individuals do not create racism, systems do.