In the documentary we saw in class on Tuesday, the guy narrating it (I looked up William Henry Gates... but that's Bill Gates?) said something that got me really thinking and really confused at the same time. And - as usual per my luck, the my question wasn't answered.
He said (paraphrasing), "I want to live in a humanity where people are not color-blind, yet are not reducible to color."
What a profound statement! Yet, is this possible? Is there a gray area between these two ideas? To me, it's kind of like saying, "Well... I want to be male, but I also want to be female." (And please, let's not get into transgenders... completely different story and I'd argue many of them still choose one to identify with, but I digress). You can't HAVE both, but at the same time BOTH are causing the issue!
If we reduce ourselves to being color-blind, then a lot of people are overlooked and the issue of discrimination and bias is ignored. This isn't healthy and just further perpetuates inequality. Yet at the same time we can't reduce people to the color of their skin - this reinforces racist sentiments and race as biology - that people are inherently different at a genetic level, reflected in a phenotypic way. Additionally, it ignores the many other aspects of people as both individuals and populations. They aren't their skin color, but an internal being reflecting the biology, culture, and environment they were raised in. Black isn't Seth - Seth is black. It's just one quality of a much larger picture. At the same time - Blackness IS an identity builder - one can't have an identity without reference to their culture and environment, and in our world for many people blackness IS the culture (at least an incredibly large part of it - something inseparable, the pinnacle of what helps them identify themselves).
So, what is between the colorful and the colorless? How do we find this, and what is the answer? Is the answer recognizing the current racism and discrimination that DOES exist at both an explicit and implicit level and attempting to deal with it? I would beg yes - but then does that reduce that part of our society to an aspect of color? How do we begin to realize that issues we see as racial issues are really just manifestations of the inequality that is currently perpetuated in our society - CAN we separate racial and inequality issues, or are they intrinsically intertwined?!
I demand thoughts on this issue. :]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Okay, Chris. Here is your answer:
ReplyDeleteWhat about striving to make *dangerous,* *threatening,* *racialized* markers like skin color more like the *exotic* markers of ethnicity? A few years back the clothing company Bennetton(sp?) had an ad campaign that tried to do just that. It showed people of many different racial types all wearing the clothes, and the tag line was the "United Colors of Bennetton."
If we can make racial markers seem less threatening, then can we envision living in a world where color is seen but not feared or despised?
I'm about to post something along these lines but in reference to food.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHenry Louis Gates, Jr. -- tried to add it several times. Didn't seem to work, then worked a little TOO well!
ReplyDelete(I also kept thinking Lewis Henry Gates, confusing him with Lewis Henry Morgan. As if!)
Let's start a dialogue, shall we?! Well, I'll at least respond.
ReplyDeleteI googled the clothing company - they had some interesting photos. I found myself thinking it was predominantly white, but then there was a photo of a white girl kissing a black guy on the cheek, and another black and white girl next to them. That was pretty nice to see.
What I was thought was interesting was that you said,
"If we can make racial markers seem less threatening, then can we envision living in a world where color is seen but not feared or despised?"
So are you relating the fact that because color is seen or despised, people want to be color-blind towards it, so as not to believe it exists? That way, in a sense, if they don't believe in it it can't harm them? I think that's an interesting way of looking at it, because before I felt it was more of a "Well, racism can't exist anymore... look at the progress we've made and the black president we have... therefore, we don't need to pay any attention to it." But at the same time there are instances of racism that people fear, and maybe they even fear that it still exists not only because of the hurt it causes, but because they want to think we are more progressive than we really are - that we really SHOULD be color-blind to it. But we know now (well, some of us) that that doesn't help ... we need to embrace it.
So - it sounds to me what you are essentially calling for is the pureness of the idea of equality; everyone is equal, without respect to skin color, etc., and aren't feared because of a list of categories that is associated with them because of perpetuated stereotypes. Is this too idealistic - I mean, is this possible for human beings to achieve? How do we get popular culture & mass society to embrace the racialized markers and UNPACK them to view them as nothing but ideas simply associated with skin color?
How do we take the threatening and racialized markers and make them exotic and opening, intriguing? A simple clothing line won't do - it's a start... but what else is there?
Chris -- good questions! GOOD questions!
ReplyDeleteYou are right that clothing lines won't do it, but is it a step toward normalizing the difference between skin colors or at least defusing their symbolic impact?
I think that the claim that gets thrown around (along with the salsa-ketchup one) about how many mixed-race people will be living in the world soon speaks to this question of skin color and threat. The more people see those differences not as threatening but as exotic or even just interesting or attractive, the more mixed-race people we're going to be seeing (if nature takes its course).
But to me the real issues is that some people win in this racialized climate and some lose, and the ones that win usually write the rules, so it's to their advantage to perpetuate fear and threat (see note in my post about food wrt the Wall Street Journal disputing the salsa claim -- I mean honestly, it's just salsa!).
As far as colorblindness in concerned, I think that when white people invoke that position and use that discourse they are hiding behind it to make the claim that race doesn't matter (to them), so it shouldn't matter to anyone else. That discourse is flawed on at least 2 fronts: 1. I think anyone who claims that race doesn't matter to them is deluding themselves (or is just not paying attention) and 2. it's a way to smack down racialized people by claiming that they are overreacting with a claim of racism when they point out or protest instances where it has occurred.
Well hello my dialogue pal! I'm not quite sure I have any questions this time - your post was quite succinct and powerful, so I'm not sure I have any questions bouncing around in my mind this time. But I did enjoy reading it. I think your quote,
ReplyDelete"But to me the real issues is that some people win in this racialized climate and some lose, and the ones that win usually write the rules, so it's to their advantage to perpetuate fear and threat."
Really speaks numbers about what racism is all about - what it boils down to. We KNOW there is racism, maybe we're not quite sure how or why or how we should stop it. It really ties into what Henry Louis Gates had to say about it - that while racism is MASKED by skin color, phonetics, and other stereotypes - what it largely boils down to is inequality. This alone has made me try and view everyone differently, from people I meet on the streets to people in a classroom. Granted, I'm not sure I'll be able to live in a generation that sees color but doesn't fear it, but it certainly is a start.
What I think would be an interesting career opportunity would be to work with an organization, non-profit or otherwise, to devise a plan to normalize the differences between skin colours and remove the symbolic impact of negative markedness. Just like what Benneton was doing. I wonder if they actually worked with a marketing team that purposefully did that, or if they just did it for beauty's sake? Regardless, there has been a lot of work done on WHAT racism is - but has a lot been done on how to challenge it (and I'm not talking Civil Rights Movement, etc. That was a large help, but I'm talking about what's being perpetuated today)? Explicitly or implicitly?
What I think is interesting is Benneton's use of images... it uses cliche, skinny, pretty people, but also a mixture of blacks and whites. I feel like this would have more implicit undertones of normalizing races to it than explicit ones - but is that what we need? Are people ("colorblind" or otherwise) so defensive about explicit claims of racism that implicit ones might do the trick on helping to normalize the differences between black and white? That is, that through images like Benneton, our mind comes to associate whites and blacks as similar instead of separate. I think that could be an interesting psychological/sociological (psychosociological? lol) study.
What do you think about explicit and implicit ways of normalizing race, or what my thoughts on it?