A big part of my objection to the concept of "race" probably had something to do with the fact that I do not have a genetic race - my mother is of European descent and my father is of Chinese descent. So right off the bat, I could see that ideas of "race" are overly simplistic and do not allow for the kinds of nuance and diversity that actually exist and are easily observable in individuals like myself.
When I explain this to people, however, they always give me the same response:
Race isn't about your genetics, it's about your culture. Your race is determined by the cultural group with which you identify most strongly. So check the damn 'white' box, because even your father's father doesn't speak Chinese.
Okay, so they don't say that last part, but that's what they are implying -- that I am White, regardless of my father's skin color, features, and ancestry. And regardless of the fact that he, despite his family's assimilation into American culture, would still obviously check the "Chinese" box. It's as though when there's any ambiguity, instead of accepting that the labeling scheme is flawed, we try to cover up the flaw by just assuming "White" is the default label and you need to have good proof that you aren't "White" if you're going to pick something else. Notice how "white" is not typically capitalized, but all the others are! But that's a different tangent I don't want to get into right now.
Until now, I have not been able to find a way to explain to anyone why simply calling myself "White" doesn't work for me, even though I would definitely not call myself "Chinese" (or any other race), either. But I finally thought of it. It boils down to this: they are making the implicit presumption that I, and all people, must identify with a race.
But here's the thing: I do not and cannot identify with any race. For my entire life, every race has seemed alien to me, including my mother's White, extended family. I have been able to infer, from what other people have said, that they feel a sense of belonging when they are among their own kind. I do not know that feeling. It's like if a straight person and a gay person were trying to make an asexual person tell them whether he's more attracted to men or women -- or even both? The answer is that the asexual person has no idea what this "attraction" thing you're talking about feels like, outside of how you describe it to him. Asking, "so you're not really attracted to either, but which one are you more attracted to?" doesn't make sense -- there is zero attraction to either one.
I do not identify with any culture, and I have not found a culture that identifies with me. White people always think that I am exceptionally strange, just like everyone else does. And for my part, I find it equally difficult to wrap my head around the values, ideals, and expectations of literally everyone that I meet, regardless of their apparent "race." What's more, I can see that there is great variety within each supposed "race," as for example my culturally American yet racially Chinese father vs. a first generation Chinese man who arrived here at the age of 65.
"Race" is an inherently flawed concept that does a terrible job of categorizing people (like me, for instance). Incidentally, that's exactly why racism is irrational -- if race really accurately described groups of people, racial stereotypes would actually be true. Since stereotypes are inaccurate much of the time, either we're just not using the right stereotypes for each race (surely nobody thinks this?) or the concept of race must be flawed. I will continue to reject and combat the racialized paradigm of thought, not just because it's incorrect, but because of all the evils, great and small, inflicted on people in the name of race.
2 comments:
My understanding is that "race" is biological/genetic whereas "ethnicity" is a cultural construct. So technically, your race (and mine) would be "half European, half Chinese"--although that idea very quickly breaks down, as well, since the biological/genetic basis for distinguishing between races is quite dubious. But the concept of race generally "works" because of large-scale genetic trends among people groups.
When it comes to ethnicity, I would consider myself to be both "thoroughly assimilated white/European American" and "thoroughly assimilated Chinese American." That doesn't mean I have the same background, exactly, as any other person who grew up with a thoroughly assimilated white/European or Chinese American caregiver, but I am likely to have a lot in common with such persons, on the whole--and I am generally likely to have more in common with such persons than I have in common with someone whose caregivers were, say, African American or first-generation Indonesian, etc. There will always be exceptions to those kind of generalizations, of course.
Anyway, I think the concept of "race" would be less harmful and less confusing if people recognized a distinction between "race" (genetic) and "ethnicity" (cultural) and if they realized both categorizations are of very limited value. I doubt that people will be able to stop making categorizations at all, but perhaps a more realistic hope would be that people would learn to think of such categories as being "soft around the edges" ...
Also, I share your experience of not knowing what it is to have a sense of "belonging" to any racial category--well, except I do feel a little bit that way about the category "biracial"--but that's probably not quite the same thing ...
I understand that ethnicity can sometimes have a sort of a vague bit of truth to it, if you're willing to smooth over all of the times that it doesn't, but that makes it worthless, practically speaking, as a descriptive term.
Knowing that two people of the same ethnicity are more likely to share SOME of a large set of characteristics than two people who are of differing ethnicity, but not knowing which ones they will share and which they won't, or what proportion they're going to share, serves no practical purpose and is even of very little theoretical value (unless you're dealing with very large groups). You can't actually know any specific thing about a person by knowing his or her ethnicity.
The only way you can know about a person is knowing about that person. An ethnicity might be a starting point for some questions, but then again it might not be. Better than nothing? Maybe it could be if racism didn't have an ugly side.
I don't think these categories are "soft around the edges," I think they have no edges at all; they're necessarily extremely vague, yet they are commonly accepted as self-evident truths.
People identify themselves and those around them primarily by their race/ethnicity when those identifications have no actual definitions (outside of stereotypes)!
You're probably right that people won't stop making categorizations, and that is why I will not stop trying to show them how poor their categorizations are at explaining reality.
Post a Comment