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Jul. 20th, 2006 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lenora_roseMuch of what Sarah Monette says here about being pale, and privileged, and therefore uncomfortable, fits my experience (Although my dealings with my characters are different.)
Which makes this even more interesting to me as it very much doesn't fit my experience.
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What can I say about racism? I'm white, all northern European. I've never been mistreated due to race, nor class (I don't count being scorned by those less privileged for being one of the privileged, and as for being looked down on by those of richer families or higher station? Well, let's just say it doesn't equate to being called trash.) and I've had surprisingly few attacks due to my gender.
Here are a few thoughts:
On the Real World, today.
- I'm not colourblind; I can't be. I'm sorry, but it's impossible not to notice if someone is Filipino or or from South Africa. Colourblind implies I treat all these people without regard to their race, that I pretend I don't notice. I want to notice -- I don't like the idea of pretending that other cultures dont exist. That's not my route to equal treatment. It's hard to explain - but cliche as the phrase is, I'd rather celebrate diversity than pretend it isn't there.
Because there are two ways to treat everyone as equals, and pretending there are no differences leads to encouraging assimilation, encouraging the monoculture. I hate the concept of monoculture, of making everyone in Canada behave as if we come from the same place and have the same tastes. I wouldn't demand that of a friend who shares my ethnic background.
The other is to notice the differences but not to take them to mean less, or more. Nobody has ever been less, or more, in my view because of their skin colour or culture. The worst it's meant is that I don't have as much common ground to build on -- which makes finding the common ground more important, as far as I'm concerned.
In our interfaith workshops, one thing that was emphasized was neither to up-play the likenesses, nor to downplay them differences. It's a popular urge - "look! See? Christian and Muslim really are alike underneath! It's the same God!"
Doing that actually leads to as many or more unfair assumptions than trying to see and understand across the gap. I don't think this is different between races and between cultures. Sure, there has to be some common ground, even if it's only the realization that we all *thought* we were doing the right thing. But that common ground can't spread to cover all the other ground -- because the so-called winner of that would be the dominant culture.
I sometimes wonder if people don't push colourblindness as a concept because it perpetuates the dominant culture even as it appears to be addressing racism.
- Once, one a message board I used to frequent, a black man came in and introduced a topic to discuss race. What instantly jumped to my mind was how much of it was (North American) Black vs. White. So, since he'd declared it open to any discussion of race, I tried to bring in other aspects. For instance, in Winnipeg, ther single most dominant race issue is with the First Nations people -- around here mainly Cree and Ojibwa. It's there every day. These are the people about whom I hear otherwise sane human beings say, "I'm not racist, but those people...".
I found it amazing how, in the great echo booth of North American Black vs. White, even where same was trying for open, thoughtful, nuanced, non-flaming discussion of racism, that post and others like it were all but ignored, practically wiped off the board. I find that it remains my msot essential message, though: Racism isn't about Black and White alone, and in some areas, that isn't even the most dominant issue. In fact, American Black & white focuses so much on their own history of slavery that many new immigrants from Africa, who seem as if they should be part of that debate are not. They don't fit.
(The second most dominant issue in Winnipeg is how we treat Immigrant families from almost anywhere non-white -- we have doctors working skilless factory jobs, and hospitals with a shortage of doctors, because the process to get another country's medical training certified is sickeningly impossible. it's not much different for other skilled jobs. Then one hears complaints that immigrants obviously don't have more than menial skills, since they're all working in convenience stores or factory jobs, and that the problem with open immigration is the lack of skilled people. Er?)
- I constantly wonder at work whether the reason the bakers and slicers are predominently black, mostly from Sierra Leone, (with some Portuguese) while the store girls and upstairs staff are predominantly white (With two exceptions from the West Indies and formerly, two Filipinos) is because of actual training and skill sets, or because of conscious or unconscious choice. It is true that many of the slicers/bakers don't write much English, have few or no computer skills, and speak with strong accents. And I acknowledge that the predominance of these particular cultures is at least partly because when jobs open up, people tell their families. But it seems too sharp a divide even so.
If it's a deliberate choice, I wonder if for colour/race, or because these are cultures where the concept of workers' rights is less known and less adhered to. Because I see the edges of worker's rights being constantly pushed in little ways.
I do know that one girl was tried in the store, and ended up back on the slicer for some reason. I was told it was because some of the customers didn't like her colour, that the customers liked her fine but she had a hard time speaking with them or being friendly, that she couldn't do the work, that she could but she was sent back without being given time enough to prove it, that she was doing the work fine, but had a bad attitude, that she really liked the change, that she didn't like it, that one of the other women in the store got her shifted back (We have one old German lady woman working who really is racist, though she doesn't usually have say enough to control who she works with, and has been told before to keep it to herself and be polite. She managed with the Filipino girls.)
I have no answers.
Tomorrow, on the Arts.
Which makes this even more interesting to me as it very much doesn't fit my experience.
___________________________________________________
What can I say about racism? I'm white, all northern European. I've never been mistreated due to race, nor class (I don't count being scorned by those less privileged for being one of the privileged, and as for being looked down on by those of richer families or higher station? Well, let's just say it doesn't equate to being called trash.) and I've had surprisingly few attacks due to my gender.
Here are a few thoughts:
On the Real World, today.
- I'm not colourblind; I can't be. I'm sorry, but it's impossible not to notice if someone is Filipino or or from South Africa. Colourblind implies I treat all these people without regard to their race, that I pretend I don't notice. I want to notice -- I don't like the idea of pretending that other cultures dont exist. That's not my route to equal treatment. It's hard to explain - but cliche as the phrase is, I'd rather celebrate diversity than pretend it isn't there.
Because there are two ways to treat everyone as equals, and pretending there are no differences leads to encouraging assimilation, encouraging the monoculture. I hate the concept of monoculture, of making everyone in Canada behave as if we come from the same place and have the same tastes. I wouldn't demand that of a friend who shares my ethnic background.
The other is to notice the differences but not to take them to mean less, or more. Nobody has ever been less, or more, in my view because of their skin colour or culture. The worst it's meant is that I don't have as much common ground to build on -- which makes finding the common ground more important, as far as I'm concerned.
In our interfaith workshops, one thing that was emphasized was neither to up-play the likenesses, nor to downplay them differences. It's a popular urge - "look! See? Christian and Muslim really are alike underneath! It's the same God!"
Doing that actually leads to as many or more unfair assumptions than trying to see and understand across the gap. I don't think this is different between races and between cultures. Sure, there has to be some common ground, even if it's only the realization that we all *thought* we were doing the right thing. But that common ground can't spread to cover all the other ground -- because the so-called winner of that would be the dominant culture.
I sometimes wonder if people don't push colourblindness as a concept because it perpetuates the dominant culture even as it appears to be addressing racism.
- Once, one a message board I used to frequent, a black man came in and introduced a topic to discuss race. What instantly jumped to my mind was how much of it was (North American) Black vs. White. So, since he'd declared it open to any discussion of race, I tried to bring in other aspects. For instance, in Winnipeg, ther single most dominant race issue is with the First Nations people -- around here mainly Cree and Ojibwa. It's there every day. These are the people about whom I hear otherwise sane human beings say, "I'm not racist, but those people...".
I found it amazing how, in the great echo booth of North American Black vs. White, even where same was trying for open, thoughtful, nuanced, non-flaming discussion of racism, that post and others like it were all but ignored, practically wiped off the board. I find that it remains my msot essential message, though: Racism isn't about Black and White alone, and in some areas, that isn't even the most dominant issue. In fact, American Black & white focuses so much on their own history of slavery that many new immigrants from Africa, who seem as if they should be part of that debate are not. They don't fit.
(The second most dominant issue in Winnipeg is how we treat Immigrant families from almost anywhere non-white -- we have doctors working skilless factory jobs, and hospitals with a shortage of doctors, because the process to get another country's medical training certified is sickeningly impossible. it's not much different for other skilled jobs. Then one hears complaints that immigrants obviously don't have more than menial skills, since they're all working in convenience stores or factory jobs, and that the problem with open immigration is the lack of skilled people. Er?)
- I constantly wonder at work whether the reason the bakers and slicers are predominently black, mostly from Sierra Leone, (with some Portuguese) while the store girls and upstairs staff are predominantly white (With two exceptions from the West Indies and formerly, two Filipinos) is because of actual training and skill sets, or because of conscious or unconscious choice. It is true that many of the slicers/bakers don't write much English, have few or no computer skills, and speak with strong accents. And I acknowledge that the predominance of these particular cultures is at least partly because when jobs open up, people tell their families. But it seems too sharp a divide even so.
If it's a deliberate choice, I wonder if for colour/race, or because these are cultures where the concept of workers' rights is less known and less adhered to. Because I see the edges of worker's rights being constantly pushed in little ways.
I do know that one girl was tried in the store, and ended up back on the slicer for some reason. I was told it was because some of the customers didn't like her colour, that the customers liked her fine but she had a hard time speaking with them or being friendly, that she couldn't do the work, that she could but she was sent back without being given time enough to prove it, that she was doing the work fine, but had a bad attitude, that she really liked the change, that she didn't like it, that one of the other women in the store got her shifted back (We have one old German lady woman working who really is racist, though she doesn't usually have say enough to control who she works with, and has been told before to keep it to herself and be polite. She managed with the Filipino girls.)
I have no answers.
Tomorrow, on the Arts.
