Rolling 2014 Thread on Race

the ACLU guy's points about the negative effects laws like the ones being advocated could have were well worth reading

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/03/jeff-chang-who-we-be_n_6081320.html

Good read, Jeff Chang's the author of Can't Stop Won't Stop which I remember more than a few ilxors love

aaaah I hadn't clicked on the NYT link and didn't realize all four of the pieces under discussion were in one place; I was sitting here half-seriously thinking "why does everyone besides me magically know where to find these things oh wait I might be doing something dumb here"

just for posterity's sake

https://twitter.com/annamilton/status/529067160778575872

Hahaha yessss

awesome

I really loved when you talked about "the opposite of a micro-aggression," that kind of moment of recognition between two people -- the "I see you" moment. I thought that could be a hopeful note to end on.

(Laughs) I think that that's what we're trying to achieve -- we talk a lot about empathy, and of course empathy should lead to recognition. I'm recognizing your struggle, I'm recognizing who you are. I'm not being blind to who you are. And I think that that's ultimately where we all want to get. That should be the product of whatever kind of conversation we're trying to have.

There was an article on Medium this week about "the nod" -- I remember in college I would hang out with a lot of black activists and I would notice that every time they passed another black student on campus they'd nod, and I'd go, "Oh, do you know them? Who's that? I see them around all the time." And they'd go, "I actually don't know." I'd ask "So why do you do that?" and they'd say "Well, you do. You just do it." Or when someone is on stage and they're performing and someone in the audience goes "I see you!" I'd always think about those kinds of cultural practices as being critical to solidarity-building.

^^
"The nod" is still alive, and even in this supposedly enlightened era it's something that can make me feel good when, at times, I feel like some people are afraid of me. I think I did a splicetoday piece on it a while back, I'll have to find it.

i haven't read it yet but will of course bc jeff's dope, but i'm really, really curious how his book squares w/ ideas of afro pessimism (i feel like it wont?)

It is all still about race: Obama hatred, the South and the truth about GOP wins - http://www.salon.com/2014/11/04/it_is_all_still_about_race_obama_hatred_the_south_and_the_truth_about_gop_wins/

Read about how southern whites respond to polls about race. This after I just got done reading a book about George Wallace's campaigns, and all of the intentionally brutal, abusive and unfair things done to black people not much more than fifty years ago. Southern whites bombed and burned black people's homes when they asserted their rights. And THEY'RE "to blame".

http://splicetoday.com/pop-culture/the-nod

true or false, 'the nod' is a nod with the chin and not the forehead?

Good piece xp

i always visualize the nod as the external occipital protuberance dipping back between the shoulders; people who do it from the chin often look like they're sneering to me

Larry: I have a tendency to nod to black people.
Jeff Greene: Wait... what reason would you have to...
Larry: I don't know, I don't know! I just find that I nod to them. More so than white... I never nod to white people.
Jeff Greene: I've never heard of, uh, "white liberal nodding guilt."
Larry: Yeah. It's a way of kind of making contact. You know, like "I'm okay. I'm not one of the bad ones."

I've caught myself doing this too, with similarly vague but positive intentions.

While living in Japan there was a lot of nodding in passing to/from other (visibly) gaijin non-tourists.

Wow

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2014/11/they-assumed-their-adopted-son-was_5.html

http://np.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/2km4et/tifu_by_making_a_stupid_assumption_about_my/

well, that is certainly an interesting situation

On one hand I am very appreciative of their efforts to try to expose their son to what they thought was his culture

On the other hand I wish they would have confirmed that he was of that ethnicity to begin with

I have kinda mixed feelings about their efforts too, I mean, if you're going to raise someone as your son, it seems kind of forced to go out of your way to have them learn all this stuff that is only their "roots" genetically, I mean that's not really how culture works.

The counterpoint to that is that they're gonna be treated as if they're of that culture in America anyway so they might as well have been given the opportunity to know more about it?

If this story is real, it's not only awful but totally weird - like, what kind of person tries so hard to give their adopted kid a great sense of his culture without double checking where his family is actually from?

It's also awful/weird to me that no one ever pointed out this kid's family were Korean during the whole adoption process.

TBF the kid's family were Korean Americans (making the distinction between that and children who were adopted from South Korea directly)

I can't imagine it would be all that damaging from the kids perspective which is probably what matters most, i.e.
"Yeah so my well-meaning foster parents erroneously thought I was of Chinese ancestry and raised me as such. I love them but they're idiots. On the plus side I'm fluent in Mandarin, well versed in Chinese culture and get stacks in red envelopes at new year from my fake uncle and aunt!"

it'd give you a good story to tell

GREAT college essay

do people in norway who adopt children from latvia send them to summer camps with the latvian embassy, teach them latvian folk dances and so forth? almost all of the reasons for intensive acculturation in 'native' culture this well meaning liberal person would cite depend upon their child being a 'visible minority' to use the canadian term

if the kid is clever it's a useful lesson in the arbitrariness of 'roots' 'cultural background' etc, if he is sufficiently inclined he can acculturate as a korean if he wishes

assuming this isnt just made up by a reddit poster

I call hoax. The dad knew the names Park and Kim were Korean when he looked at the adoption papers, are we to believe he never heard or read their names during the entire adoption process? Or was he clueless about last names 17 years ago?

this sounds like total bullshit

Yeah it's the 'visible minority' part that makes me agree w/ the Reddit parents decision to acculturate their child

I've posted a few pieces itt by non-white adoptees who have wished that their parents would have emphasized their ethnic or racial heritage in their upbringing rather than raising them 'colorblind'

The dad knew the names Park and Kim were Korean when he looked at the adoption papers, are we to believe he never heard or read their names during the entire adoption process? Or was he clueless about last names 17 years ago?

― nickn, Thursday, November 6, 2014 4:34 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

TBF this is the kind of knowledge that could come from 17 years of trying to learn more about Chinese culture

I make these mistakes all the time (latest one was w/ the surname Yu which I now know is also a surname in Korean)

I didn't catch how old they were when they did the adoption, so maybe they really didn't know. But Park and Kim are the most common Korean surnames, it seems, like comically so (like naming an Irish character in a book Patrick O'Brien).

I also noticed the comment about how mad they were that it was so easy to adopt a non-white baby compared to a white one. Would these people go to such great lengths to acculturate a "second choice" non-white baby?

Park and Kim are some of the most common Korean surnames yeah but I'd wager not many white Americans would know those surnames as specifically Korean rather than just generic 'Asian'

the bit about the adoption process - judging from what I know of other people who have gone through it - sounds p specious. maybe things were a lot looser/simpler 17 years ago but I kind of doubt it.

the story is probably fictive but the idea that 20 years ago adoption people referred to their prospective child as 'asian' or 'chinese' interchangeably isn't entirely implausible

the child described as 'chinese' to describe nw asian appearance rather than filipino, malay etc etc

Yeah it's been my experience growing up at around the same time this kid was presumably adopted that most kids of East Asian descent were just called 'Chinese'

Think Millennials and post-millennials are using 'Asian' more though

The father also said this, though "...because we live in an area on the west coast where there are a lot of Chinese immigrants and Chinese-Americans have been living for generations and generations." so I assumed he should be somewhat familiar with Asian names.

I can say that a coworker in the 80s didn't know our boss's last name, Kuruma, was Japanese and not Chinese, so it is possible.

just realized I kind of assumed a couple of my new coworkers were Chinese-American so I double-checked to make sure I'm jumping to conclusions. Chen and Chang, I think I'm probably in the clear

Well it's true that there is somewhat of a geographical divide. San Francisco has historically been the site of Chinese immigration, while Korean immigration has focused on LA

Anyway (assuming this is true) he's writing from the perspective of someone who has been spending 17 years at least trying to get to know more about Chinese culture? So I'm not surprised by the ex post facto nature

Also with these matters I'm comfortable in assuming that the average white person is more ignorant w/r/t these matters than less ignorant

Chang is a very common Korean surname and Chen is a spelling variant of another xp

I know nothing

I guess a good example of this would be the brouhaha in last year's thread from J.K. Rowling deciding to name the only East Asian character in her book 'Cho Chang' w/o giving much thought to what connotation it has

whew, google and social media to the rescue

now I'm just wtf @ my coworker with a PhD having the same job title I do

Pro-tip: If Chang is not Korean then he's probably Taiwanese or HK or other Chinese diaspora

you are completely on point, as expected (thanks, linkedin)
Languages:
Chinese
Native or bilingual proficiency
English
Professional working proficiency
Taiwanese
Limited working proficiency

Yeah Taiwanese would have been my first guess based on those two names but Korean would have been second

yeah, not sure where Duh0ng is from but I haven't worked with him much

idk i can't really imagine what it would be like for this kid, but my first thought is that it must be really fucking with his sense of identity? like, what a totally weird situation to grow up fully believing you're chinese, learning the language and culture, regularly visiting the country of your supposed ancestry, only to find out you're korean???

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/i-taught-my-black-kids-that-their-elite-upbringing-would-protect-them-from-discrimination-i-was-wrong/