I'm done with race - listen to this

[QuentinSummers]

Brilliant radio programme about identity politics. It is one of the most powerful things i have ever listened to and really resonated with me as a white woman too.
They talk about who benefits by arbitrarily categorizing people based on a descriptor (whether that's skin colour, biological sex or anything else).
Would love to hear more from these guys but in the meantime I'm identifying as human every time I get asked what I identify with.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09sn7ym

River - I can answer that question from my perspective. As with the thread that is running on cultural appropriation at the moment... as a white person (and I have a white mother and a whiter-looking father so really I am white in the way I perceive myself and the way others perceive me), when people strongly identify as black who am I not to recognise that they are black and that being black is a thing and is important to them and not simply a by-the-by question of how much melanin they have? And from a female perspective, it was interesting to think about whether tying yourself strongly to the identity of woman is personally liberating or is it perhaps the opposite?

Either way, you can't simply ignore sexism and racism obviously.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the other episode and will do before commenting further.

It didn't really make me think differently it just really spoke to my own views of being female and why i find being told I "identify as" female really fucking offensive. Because of all the baggage and perceptions being bundled up with it.
I don't think in the current climate women could make this programme so I'm really pleased these guys did.

Quentin, so it was more about the terminology and baggage of "identify as" than anything else?

Mirabilis, I don't even understand "tying myself strongly to the concept identifying as a woman". Sorry if being thick.

You know I nearly said this on the other thread but I have a feeling it's too OT there.

When I was little, I had a friend whose granny had never left her local patch in London. The family as a whole tried to persuade her on days out to the seaside etc but even as young as 8, I'd say "leave her be". By about 14, I was gobby enough to say "quit bugging the poor woman"! Unsurprisingly she and I got on really well, she's no longer here and I don't just miss her, but increasingly, I want my future to be more like hers. The world is a big horrible complicated place, full of crap, full of people creating crap, and just London feels like an entire planet some days.

How nice to just park in one place, be a local, only know local things. Her local was Archway and she never dreamed of "othering" me on account of my skin colour, we were all just North Londoners and that was it.

Not just that. I also found it really interesting. Like Lawrence saying he liked to call himself "half breed" because it sounded cool. Can imagine my son doing that! And the stuff about women presenting sexy to conform alongside how black men present and "don't work for the white man"
Just thought it was a neat illustration of different power dynamics

Oh and how do I see race?
I don't know, it's complicated. I've spent my whole life feeling extremely guilty for saying something racist, as a joke, to a black girl in my class at school when I was 12. She never spoke to me again and I lost a friend because of that.
I try really hard to accept others differences while at the same time knowing I can never really "get it". I think that is one of the reasons why I found the programme so good. Started off thinking, oh this is interesting, ended up thinking I had more in common with these guys than I realised.

It's so confusing. I do have brown and black friends and acquaintances and have discussed race issues with them but then I have been accused of being racist on threads on here before so .

Quentin I suppose because I always just thought it's a human race, I thought he took a very long winded path to get to that statement But I really hope this gets an audience and some understanding.

Interestingly I have a white friend who I think secretly feels like I'm rejecting what she sees as my origins in some way. The other day, one of my dad's ancient anecdotes came up in conversation and she said, thoughtfully, "your family really have been here for their whole life" - like she'd never thought that before! I mean, she knows our history, but she's one of these people who is obsessed with cultural appropriation and the things that might have happened to my ancestors in the 12th century if you see what I mean.

I don't even understand "tying myself strongly to the concept identifying as a woman". Sorry if being thick

No not thick at all. I suppose from what I remember from that programme - as I said I listened to it live at the time and haven't had a chance to revisit yet - I think one of the men, who is mixed race, said he went through a period of strongly identifying as black and being "it's because I'm black isn't it?" before starting to think "fuck that" and refusing to answer the extremely loaded question "where are you from?" that British POC get asked.

And with feminism I feel there - particularly at the moment when women are feeling the need to reassert XX - there's a conflict between wanting to say, No India I AM A WOMAN and also needing to liberate oneself from all the baggage that people want to weigh you down with as a woman, or indeed being happy about all the generally understood benefits of being a woman, which in turn can be negatives if you are someone who cannot access them "growing people inside you", breastfeeding etc. So, no, not being thick at all because I'm not sure what I think about it all.

In middle of bf so can't look it up but when I looked into black critiques of identity politics many pointed to Fanon's ideas.

I guess many of us don’t identify as a race or gender. It is forced on us. I can remember the exact moment when my ethnicity was forced on me. The example is not from UK. I grew up in a multi ethnic country. Never thought of my ethnicity as anything except a geographical description of where my parents were from but mostly did not think about it. Then one day I was called that girl as an insult by an adult. Similarly for gender, when you are constantly told girls don’t do this or that you cannot escape it. Your identity is forced on you.

I am light skin enough not to have to deal with race issue on an everyday manner. It is a completely different matter for my husband.

I guess identity is not something an individual can choose (as it was discussed in another thread, it is negotiated with the wider society)

MochaSoul

You are a joy to read.

Hey magnificent. Nice to see you back, thought the other thread might have scared you off

It seems asterisks don’t get posted. In my PP, I meant to say xxxx girl where xxxx was a factual description of my ethnicity, was used as an insult against me.

I don't mean to be rude OP but I would be very surprised if you were not white...being able to ignore 'race' and identify as human is a result of white privilege and unconsciously viewing white as the default. BME people in the U.K. don't get to just be a human because almost every interaction they have with white people is through a lens of them being 'other'

Thanks Quentin,

I had not checked the posts last couple of days. Read many insightful posts on it today.

Not easily scared

Did you listen to the programme adelind? I am white, but I said identify as human specifically referencing something in the programme.
I know I'm privileged not to be defined by my race.

Ive popped over from the other thread which right up til the end was really good magnificent

Good to see you on here

I know I'm privileged not to be defined by my race

I agree

My relatives on one side of the family are black and some of the stories they would tell would just leave me as it had never and would never happen to me

The way I see it is that even if scientifically race doesn't exist, socially it does, and has a huge impact on how a specific individual's life will turn out. It makes a poor analogy for "gender" in lots of ways, one of which is that we don't actually allow people to self-ID as a race that nobody looking at them would think they were and then write laws trying to compel others to treat their self-declaration as a fact, and another of which is that there are lots of people whose race is ambiguous and can't immediately be determined at a glance, far more so than for sex.

The underlying thing though is that social categories are something we're assigned to by others. We can say "I reject that and see myself as more SomethingElse instead" or "I reject these categories entirely", and that may be a thing that feels useful to us to do and makes us happier in some ways, but it doesn't actually have much impact on how other people see us and treat us, because how they treat us is based on the categories that they've slotted us into based on appearance, accent, etc. Sex is the most clearly defined category, scientifically, but even the clearest categories have a bunch of socially constructed stuff piled on top of them that has an impact on our lives whether we want it to or not.

Oh MochaSoul

I am a mixed-race mother of a white passing child, and I fear that scenario, having seen it happen to someone close to me when growing up. My white partner does not really get why I am so soo opposed to moving out of the inner city to one of the nice but very white villages. I just - here I am me, not "the [ethnicity] mum".

Glad to see you over on this thread Magnificent - thank you for starting such interesting discussions!

river just rereading and you said:
Quentin I suppose because I always just thought it's a human race, I thought he took a very long winded path to get to that statement
Maybe because I'm white I needed the path to take me there :)

Quentin, all jokes aside, race is not relevant...I hate that style of "waffle waffle waffle....suddenly make key point". There's a lot of it about.

There are lots of us about who just think "human race" I reckon.

Quentin you just made me brave

I will carry on replying to the "but where are you REALLY from" rude people with "London".

But if anyone does the "head tilt, what is your background" I'm going to say "my background is I'm sick of being asked about my background" even if it is someone who thinks they've found a fellow in race or culture or whatever it is they are fishing for.

Yay!

It will come about in the wash. Identity politics is a little like the religious conflicts in Europe in that everyone wants to gain control of the power of the state on behalf of their own in-group and use that power to force others into line. If we all agreed to seperate the government from identity issues we'd all be forced to negotiate and over time would work it out.

Personally I'm white and don't feel particularly privileged as pretty much any assertion of my identity as a white person is automatically equated with the nazis. I guess white privilege sort of exists if you are actually willing to go the whole hog and embrace racial superiority, but I'm not so hey.

In truth it's not really a white identity I'd want to be proud of and assert, but a cultural one. Now true it's a culture that has predominantly been historically white, but I think there have already been such colossal contributions from people with other skin colours to even call it white culture would be innacurrate.

Personally I think being white is untenable going forward into the future. Way too many 'original sins' are associated with it of which whatever 'privilege' exists is not significant enough to shield from this perceived historical culpability.

I don't have to worry about it though my DC is multiracial, and that will provide better insulation in the future than what I possessed. British culture, language etc will still endure and over time white/poc will be an archaic term of no particular relevance.

CritEqual " British culture, language etc will still endure and over time white/poc will be an archaic term of no particular relevance."

this is what I thought when I was a teenager