rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

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yeah that is a good point. that pattern seems to historically have been overcome by assimilating immigrant groups into "whiteness" in part through recourse to the grand american tradition of antiblack racism. for various reasons i find it hard to imagine the various american muslim ethnicities being assimilated into whiteness, but i guess it could happen in some future where muslim fundamentalist terrorism is no longer the main foreign security threat the united states faces.

xp to max

I love how the crazy anti-sharia types mostly seem pissed because it's not the particular type of theocracy that they want to impose.

american muslim ethnicities already are assimilated into whiteness in some parts of the country. I think the bigger issues are:
a. there aren't really very many muslims in america
b. they're usually clustered in a few areas

or is it? lot of common ground amongst christian fundies and muslim fundies.

xp

they want almost the exact same set of rules but they want to be able to put their label on the box

american muslim ethnicities already are assimilated into whiteness in some parts of the country.

no. only true of some ethnicities: mostly arab and, you know, bosnian. has not happened for south indian muslims, african muslims, african-american muslims (non-immigrants of course) etc etc etc.

also for the purposes of talking about the current strain of anti-muslim sentiment, that muslim is racialized. it's not really about your bosnian neighbor who can pass.

also since 9/11 i'd imagine a lot of palestinian/lebanese/syrian muslims have been re-racialized. i know the yemeni community in buffalo never achieved whiteness to begin with. there are arabs and then there are arabs.

I tried to skim through this Islamophobic blog to see if they listed any actual examples of Sharia law being implemented in U.S. courts but nope all the stories that have to do with actual court cases are just "Court rules against conservative group lobbying against construction of a mosque in whatever community" or "Judge looks at/mentions Qu'ran during trial."

http://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/

muslims exist! those people have a lot of babies!

have any people who aren't technically white achieved whiteness? that's kinda hard to measure. there are certainly 3rd generation asian-americans who are culturally 98% 'white', but has society accepted them as such? etc.

heh

i mean what does it mean to be 'technically' 'white'

well by 'technically white' I mean caucasian I guess, which includes arabs

obviously whitness here is a construct. when i say achieve whiteness in part through appeals to antiblack racism i'm talking about inclusion for irish americans, italian americans, later eastern european americans. nativist sentiment gives way to solidarity against the true threat, where blackness is imagined as irreducibly other. this is all imaginary of course; it's not like racism is coherent. or that being white means anything in this imagination other than not a threat.

well by 'technically white' I mean caucasian I guess, which includes arabs

― iatee, Tuesday, February 28, 2012 12:40 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weeeeell it's not like those 19th century racial categorizations hold up rigorously

non-european immigrants end up unassimilable in that way, is basically what i'm saying

fyi there's no good youtube video of the Wayne Brady question from the Chapelle "Negrodamus" sketch

xposts

don't think asian americans are viewed by white people as white

they need more tumblrs

people from North India and Pakistan are Aryans (can't get more white than that, at least if you're Hitler). not that that makes much difference to yer average redneck.

Sharia vs. Santorum-approved theocracy seems like narcissism of small differences to me but sounds like total end of the world hysteria to our local zealots. "We're cool with the subjugation of women but God forbid they have to cover their hair, that's insanity!".

I don't think non-european immigrants end up unassimilable tho! every time I hang out at the queens mall I gawk in amazement at how people from every country in the world can turn into the same annoying american teenagers.

there is def a 'whiteness' and a 'white-ness' and maybe the first can eventually exist outside of the second, but I think it's simplifying things to say that, idk, some jewish or italian guy who could pass as a wasp due to the way he looks isn't different from someone who never, ever will be able to 'pass as a wasp'.

come on guys, whiteness in america means "absence of race." nobody gives a fuck that my kashmiri peasant relatives are "Aryan" according to some defunct wack racial typology

i do

i kinda miss the days when theocracy was anathema to American Catholics across the board ... b/c of the shit that JFK had to go through, plus a general sense of self-preservation (even now, this country is still largely Protestant and an American theocracy would most likely be a Protestant Evangelical one).

I don't think non-european immigrants end up unassimilable tho! every time I hang out at the queens mall I gawk in amazement at how people from every country in the world can turn into the same annoying american teenagers.

i don't mean unassimilated culturally! the swarthy hairy/hijab-ed yemenis on the corner are assimilated culturally! i mean assimilated as white. at some point cartoons of irish americans made them look like apes. eventually that stopped happening, because there were other people to caricature as apes.

i mean, even now Tim Tebow is more likely to be the First American Ayatollah than Rick Santorum (however Santorum may pander to the evangelicals).

Tim Tebow? no.

"We're cool with the subjugation of women but God forbid they have to cover their hair, that's insanity!".

― joygoat, Tuesday, February 28, 2012 11:46 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the selective appearance of feminism in conservative rhetoric whenever islam comes into view is seriously the most annoying thing

again I think there are certain limitations to 'assimilated as white' that come inherent w/ the way people look.

like I'm half arab-jewish and am a bit darker than 'average white person' and my dad is quite certainly 'not white'. but I pass as white. mostly.

and if my dad were from africa, that would not be the case.

I guess I'd rather have the Catholic theocracy than the Protestant as there would be a higher probability of having booze around, though either would still allow for ham on Easter.

the selective appearance of feminism in conservative rhetoric whenever islam comes into view is seriously the most annoying thing

it's second-most annoying behind selectively quoting passages from the Qu'ran without textual or cultural context

again I think there are certain limitations to 'assimilated as white' that come inherent w/ the way people look.

yeah, sure. i think you're wrong, though, that that's all it's about when it comes to say, asian americans. there's a whole unstable incoherent mythology that comes into play.

for the way this has worked historically see walter benn michaels article "the difference between white men and white men."

I don't think that's all it's about! I just think it's not something you can completely discount.

like I'm half arab-jewish and am a bit darker than 'average white person' and my dad is quite certainly 'not white'. but I pass as white. mostly.

and if my dad were from africa, that would not be the case.

you have no idea if this is true or not

and in the case of the yemenis on the corner these days, it's less about their skin color (some of them look "white," some don't) than about the fact that the women are wearing headscarves.

well yeah, it depends and 'passing as white' would not be unrelated to the actual darkness of my skin.

xp

i pass pretty easily as white

I AM DESCENDED FROM THE FIRST WHITE WOMAN BORN IN NORTH AMERICA

THE FIRST

WHITE

WOMAN

― max, Tuesday, February 15, 2011 4:38 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

PM me if u want an autograph

i working on a book, Whites: an Anatomy that's going to clear all this up, fyi.

well yeah, it depends and 'passing as white' would not be unrelated to the actual darkness of my skin.

please show me an example of "passing as white" that is unrelated to the actual darkness of the person's skin

no he's agreeing with you about that

lol

all i'm saying is that there's a non-empirical component to the imagination of whiteness

okay maybe I should get lunch because I don't understand the point iatee is attempting to make at all

and that in america "whiteness" is imagined against blackness, basically. which affects the history of how non-african/non-african american groups get racialized.