An odd honor, my own fault

[ritaxis]

So I got this weird phone call today.  A sweet young person from the University asked me if I would participate in a special day where alumnae of color come to advise students of color on how to achieve the kind of career success the alumnae have achieved.

I  listened to the description of the event, waiting for the punchline that would make the invitation make sense, but finally I realized there wasn't going to be one, and I said, "Wait a minute.  Are you under the impression that I am an alumna of color?"  I should have said "successful alumna of color" as well, but I didn't think of that till later.  She said yes, and I had to disabuse her of that idea and thank her kindly for the invitation but also suggest that she could find someone who fit her criteria -- any of her criteria -- better than I.

I think I know how this happened.  For many years whenever I fill out the ethnicity questionaires, I check "other," and write in "semite."  This is because I don't really fit into the category of "white" very well, given the kinds of experiences I have had and the kind of wordview I have, and I am on a mission to desimplify ethnicity, and I haven't yet come up with a better way to correctly express my skewed relationship to mainstream privilege and all that.  I do not mean to claim that I have the experiences that a person in a caste of color receives in this country.  When I need to make the distinction in that direction, I own up to being white enough for the purpose.  I never expected that anybody but statisticians would be looking at these questionaires, though.

But it tells you something about what "ethnic" means in our society: "ethnic" means "of color."  There are even contexts in which this is a useful meaning.  There are other contexts in which it is not, and I spend more of my time in those contexts than in the other ones, so I simply didn't realize that I was setting a trap for myself and the people I wish to ally myself with.

But I don't think I'll stop, because I don't think it's a really important or dangerous trap.

Comments

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

And to think I've been checking "other" and writing in "Nerd" on those for the better part of two decades. I suppose that's why my alma mater never calls me* (-:

(* actually it's because the Alumni Association can't find me, which is amusing when you consider I've *worked* there for nearly a decade now.)

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Interesting take. So does 'Nerd' take its place with "Asian" or "Hispanic", so that someone could be 100% Nerd, but someone who is Asian would be bi-ethnic Nerd-Asian?

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

Not actually directly applicable, but I do recommend this column by Patricia Williams if you haven't seen it:

http://www.ywca.org/site/pp.asp?c=lkJZJdO4F&b=6223479

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

As usual, Patricia Williams is right on. Thank you! I always love reading everything she writes.

And she's right. And it's probably directly applicable, as it makes me uncomfortable about this thing I do(I don't want to be one of those liberals who try to deny the role of color in US society! Damnit!).

I really, really, don't want to define myself as not-black: I want to define myself (the way I really see myself) as "marginal." But I don't want to subvert the purpose of demographics.

So now I have to wonder if today's experience doesn't just show me that that's what I've been doing, and maybe I ought to stop, and choose soime other context for dealing with this.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

'White' is a big category, and so is 'Asian' or 'black' or any other. I don't understand why there's supposed to be some sort of "White" that requires an utter lack of any ethnic background for one to qualify. How would that even be possible? Does "White" only mean English and German Protestants?

Asian doesn't micro-specify, and my experiences as a Japanese-American mean that I have more privilege than a Laotian or Hmong immigrant in some ways...and it elides my cultural heritage that's strongly Latino and Jewish from marriage and family and affiliation...but that's not what these surveys are asking.

I really don't get it.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I think that when we do these surveys we're not really tallying up skin colors, or ethnic background: we're looking for markers of need and market for services. But I think I've been answering a different question about community, which for some reason I understood this morning but no longer do, I thought might be answerable in the same demographic questions.