I like the quality of the posts/discussions lately. It's nice to see a lack of firefights (flame wars), some mutual respect (within reason of course), and some good back and forth. I wish DH would say a little more sometimes, but beggars can't be choosers. I know you save the good stuff for your blog, newsletter, etc...though I would also understand if you were tired of the - let's optimistically call it - old way discussions were carried out on this list.
Listening to Reed on btn reminded me of something I wrote a long time ago:
People talk about how this country can never heal until it "confronts race." There is a great truth in this, but talking about it is just scratching the surface. It is a deep open wound. What happens when you scratch the surface of an open wound? Anytime people honestly "confront race" - take MLK and Malcom X for example - they quickly see (MLK saw it long before Malcom X), that race is tied directly to class. Then, if you are serious and sincere, you have to face facts and confront class. That is why - as long as this is a capitalist country - we will never "confront race."
Well, this looks so simple it's not worth posting, but then again, why not?
As for the recent "people of color" discriminating on the basis of shade discussion? Yes, all over the world as far as I know. I don't know how far it goes back, but I'm sure some anthropologists might have a clue. Was there "shade discrimination" in cultures before white colonialism?
I have hung out with Mexicans and African-americans and from what I experienced, it appears to be pretty deep in both groups, though I heard a lot more shade stuff from African-americans (then again, i'm not fluent in Spanish, so i'm sure i missed a lot), e.g., there is a whole taxonomy that continues from the old days: variations on ashy, coffee, mocha, high-yellow, yellow, etc...
Hawaii is an interesting example when it comes to attitudes about shade/race/ethnicity. It would be easy to write a multi-volume investigation of all the factors involved and how they all combine and play out, but something much shorter will have to suffice here.
If anyone is interested in seeing how race, class, colonialism, and a slew of other historical forces converged in Hawaii in 1932, investigate the Massie Affair. Here are just the bare bones of what happened:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massie_Trial
I'm sure there are many other resources on the web if you want to learn more about the details. There was a documentary on PBS about it, but I'm not sure if it was shown much on the mainland. I had no idea it existed, but I just saw there is a movie that seems to be inspired by the events - though just reading the description it looks like a white wash (pun intended) of actual events.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090749/
Quite an eclectic cast, including Kris Kristofferson!
If you read the wikipedia entry you will note that by the end of the Affair, some famous people (even so-called progressives) were involved. To call the Affair sordid does not even begin to descibe the venality and psychosis involved. Of course those are pretty good words to use in any discussion of racism, colonialism, class, etc...
So, back to the question of shade discussion:
In Hawaii today, most people have the idea that it is better to be lighter than darker - I'm talking about what "people of color" think in Hawaii. For example, darker kids get teased for being darker than their peers - and I've heard plenty of comments from adults too. Many locals appear more racist toward African-americans than people on the mainland (i.e., here in the continental u.s.). I think it is true on the surface, but like almost everything else, more complex when you peak underneath. The most important contributing factor on that front is that Hawaii is a colony (I never said this to most locals because it would be perceived as an insult) and most minds have been well-colonized - in fact, it is so extreme that the effect is often disconcerting; so, short answer: of course they are racist, because the colonizers are racist. it's good ol' american apple pie racism. The interesting thing is that most locals have had little actual experience of
African Americans (of course the same could be said for most of white america). This works multiple ways. If locals had any meaningful contact with African-americans they were usually military personnel and the history of locals interacting with the military hasn't always been free of friction - although even saying that is complicated, because much of the population has a strong connection to the military directly or indirectly because after all, the islands of Hawaii are one big military base.
I feel like I should be footnoting here a la David Foster Wallace, but to continue:
Another interesting recent development is the rise of hip-hop culture and its effect of, for lack of a better phrase, making it cool to be black. When I was working in what would be equivalent to an inner-city high school, a colleague and I were in a classroom. The kids were talking to each other, calling each other nigga (not n-word, but since they most likely weren't aware of those subtleties I will leave that alone for the moment). My colleague happened to be an African-american professional basketball player who was extremely popular with the kids. He heard the word and had the appropriate response. He angrily turned around and said, "What did you say? What makes you think you can say that?" In retrospect, I should have just let it play out, but essentially I said, "man these kids have no clue. they don't understand what it means, they don't understand what it means to be black in the u.s. They're just using it because they listen to rap and watch
tv and are imitating what they see and hear." Though this actually calls for a big footnote, because they were poor, living in the projects; so, on one level at least, they could understand it better than i ever could. (And yes I know not all African-americans are from "the hood" - though my colleague happened to be). He was a little shaken and said he understood and we both talked to the kids about it, but it didn't sink in with the kids because as i said: they don't really know what the black experience is - because they were born and raised in Hawaii where they learn even less about the black experience than kids on the mainland and see fewer black people.
This is just a sketch. I'm trying to get at the features of the general dynamic. So, you may ask, are the locals more racist than mainlanders? In a word, no. This is where it gets really interesting. In Hawaii, people of different races/nationalities marry each other and have babies. They've been doing it for generations. Here is what I see as one of the most interesting aspects of the culture: they talk and joke about difference every day. I mean every day, that is how deeply intertwined it is in the culture. I have always had a belief that this is an extremely important aspect of the culture that has not only kept people from killing each other, but lets a peace exist that engenders a level of intermarriage (or however one wants to put it) that I haven't seen anywhere else. I don't think I'm putting the cart before the horse, i.e., that they intermarried and then started joking and talking honestly about nationality/race. I imagine it happened
right away. I imagine the joking and talking was a lubricant for social relations and then it became an integral part of the culture that kept it all going.
This is a rich topic, that needs real study - who knows, maybe there are studies, I've never actually looked. It's a lot more complicated than I have presented it, e.g., the jokes and discussions are part of the culture, but it's not like it's all nice nice. The jokes can be pretty crass and people can tell you hateful horrible racist things about any identity and mean it. To add another level of complexity, the joke teller could be (and often is) making the joke about him/herself. For example: Portuguese are the Polish of Hawaii. I don't even hear a whisper of a "Pollock joke" anymore here on the mainland, but Portuguese jokes are told everyday in Hawaii. I think this actually goes back to the Plantation days when Portuguese were made lunas (plantation overseers). If you do something stupid, a common response is, "what are you, Portagee?" This comment could be made by someone who identifies as Filipino and Hawaiian and Portuguese and Haole
(white) to someone who might not have any Portuguese ancestry at all - or vice versa...
Anyway as I said, volumes could be written...One key may be that people are talking about it everyday,often in the form of a question, i.e., "what are you" "what is she?" "is she part Hawaiian?" It's all above the surface all of the time. And of course the thousands of jokes. Jokes based on nationality/race. They range from stupid and cruel (what would be called racist in a second) to witty and charming. They make fun of accents too but they are almost always based on a national/racial stereotype. Chinese are cheap, Japanese are quiet, Portuguese are stupid and talk a lot, etc...Rap Reiplinger was a famous local comedian who in the context of explaining racial/nationality mixes in Hawaii, told a joke in Pidgin that goes something like, "he was Japortugee: had plenny to say, but no like talk about it." That's an example of a joke that cracked me up, but I wouldn't have understood it without living in the culture for quite a while and feeling what
local people feel when they hear it.
A few days ago I was watching a video of Slavoj Zizek and Cornel West at Princeton - I know this almost sounds like a joke set-up itself - and was surprised to come across this bit from Zizek (it starts around 1:30:00). If i attempt to summarize the discussion that led to the point of this story it would take up a few lbo-talk digests, so it's better just to watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBvASueefk4
So, if you watch it, there it is, a direct connection between a culture of nationalist/racist joke telling (to each other's faces) and peace. Go figure. All of this has profound meaning that I have spent some time thinking about. I think it is tied up with consciousness and other existential questions. Whatever it is, it goes very deep. Beckett knew this. I won't continue to take up space here musing about it - and also it will probably take another few years for me to get a grasp on something useful to say about it. That, and one of these days I have to do some real research. Probably Freud on Jokes and their relation to the unconscious would not be a bad place to start mining for gold. I just searched for a couple of seconds and found this:
Freud uses this to springboard into an exploration of how a joke involves an arrangement of people - a joketeller, an audience/listener, and a butt, often involving two (the jokester and the listener) against one, who is often a scapegoat. He describes how jokes may be sexual, "stripping" that person, and then turns towards how jokes package hostility or cynicism. The synthetic part is an attempt to bring together the structure of the joke and the pleasurable tendencies of the joke. Why is it that jokes are pleasurable? Freud's answer is that there is a pleasure to be obtained from the saving of psychic energy: dangerous feelings of hostility, aggression, cynicism or sexuality are expressed, bypassing the internal and external censors, and thus enjoyed. He considers other possible sources of pleasure, including recognition, remembering, appreciating topicality, relief from tension, and the pleasures of nonsense and of play. Then, in a move that would either baffle his critics or is ignored by them, Freud turns to jokes as a "social process", recognizing
that jokes may say more about social life at a particular time than about particular people; he turns this into an investigation of why people joke together, expanding on his economical psychic perspectives with discussions of social cohesion and social aggression.
Aloha,
J