Was reading an article where ⚫️ is capitalized and⚪️ is not. I've seen this before and it continues to feel weird to me. Gonna do a bit of research and think out loud a bit...
16 tweets · December 2021 · 49 likes · 1 retweets · read on Twitter
Was reading an article where ⚫️ is capitalized and⚪️ is not. I've seen this before and it continues to feel weird to me. Gonna do a bit of research and think out loud a bit...
Okay, this piece makes the case that ⚪️ should also be capitalized, to avoid allowing it to fade into the background as default. In one sense this seems right, although I eschew reifying categories so this feels like the wrong direction. washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/…
Someone once asked if me and another guy were brothers, and I said "no, but I can see why you would think so, we're both ⚪️ and have curly hair" and he was like "I'm Latino" & I was like "oh, huh!" To me he looked like he could be my brother. Maybe the reverse was not true? idk!
I met a ⚫️ woman in SF who asked if I had ⚫️ ancestry. She thought of "Malcolm" as a ⚫️ name, and thought I might have been named after Malcolm X... which seemed looked plausible given my curls & swarthy complexion, I guess. (my name comes from my Scottish heritage)
Anyway, heritage is a whole thing! I used to be very confused about the term "African American" until at 16 I realized it was a way of pointing at a particular fairly-unusual kind of heritage caused by slavery, where you don't know which country your ancestors actually came from.
This distinction between phenotype (the shape, color, appearance of your body) and ethnic heritage (where you're from, culturally) is vital. It can't be totally separated for tons of reasons, but failing to make it in the first place is a recipe for profound confusion.
So it seems to *me* this has something to do with why the word "Black" is coming into existence as a capitalized identity. It's like "Scottish". Thus no need for a capitalized "White" since there's no equivalent ethnic heritage group.
There is ofc a kind of ethnic experience that might be described as "mixed European", ie "my ancestors are from various places in Europe but I grew up in Canada/US & don't have any specific European-country cultural traditions." I'm close to this despite 90% Scottish ancestors.
Also, in this model, someone who grew up in Gambia, no matter where they live now, doesn't need that post-slavery descriptor either—they'd be "Gambian" or even something more specific like Mandinka or Fula or Wolof.
(Although ofc if they're living in the USA, their cultural experience of how other people interact with them is going to be affected by how others perceive them, which may involve an implicit assumption that they came to USA from slavery rather than a college scholarship)
Lines up with: > When people identify with specific terms of the African diaspora, we defer to those; in the absence of the identifiable ethnicities slavery stole from those it subjugated, Black can be a preferred ethnic designation for some descendants. cjr.org/analysis/capit…
Then this piece points out how there's no such thing as race (physically; it exists memetically) > skin color is related to the amount of solar radiation but > genetic pathways to dark skin are different in Tamil Nadu and in Nigeria newsweek.com/there-no-such-…
All of this prompts me to think that MLK had the right idea around focusing on the content of people's character, not the color of their skin. I would add: and on what we can do together! Can we make music? Can we dance? Can we do science? Can we learn from each other?
Afaict, reifying race as category is getting in the way of people appreciating each other as people. Recognizing differences & similarities is helpful for making sense of our experiences, but category-first is stereotype-based thinking.
"I'm gonna stop calling you a white man, and I'm gonna ask you to stop calling me a black man. I know you as Mike Wallace, and you know me as Morgan Freeman." youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtY…
I'm interested in how this thread lands for people! I'm trying to think through how to think about this stuff. I've restricted replies to [people I follow] since uhh *gesture around* But it feels good to think about this out loud, like I do with other topics.