Self-ID and racism question

[headintheproverbial]

I was just pondering this morning about the whole 'TWAW' argument and got to thinking about several people over recent years who have lost jobs / been massively criticised for identifying as another race.

So there was an American college professor who had built a career teaching African American studies who had presented herself as Black and was absolutely demolished (quite rightly probably) when it came out that she wasn't. Lost her job, abused on Twitter etc etc.

And yet when a man suddenly decides he's a woman we have to just jump on that and accept it as fact?

Is the difference simply... you know men vs women? Or is it more nuanced in a way I haven't considered. Because if it isn't more nuanced it might be an interesting argument to use.

Also to shout:

“Of COURSE that’s different you RACIST! That is cultural appropriation of an oppressed group. It’s not my job to explain it to you. Go and EDUCATE yourself”

#nodebate (cos I go no leg to stand on)

Yup me to TRA family member (not my DC!): "So how is it different from Rachel Dolezal claiming to be black, because that's similar to sex in that it's a physical characteristic on which oppression is based"

Family member: NO it's NOT the same! Race is NOT gender!

Me: I didn't say race was gender, I compared race to sex, not gender. But anyway can you explain why it's not the same?

No, I don't think it would be viewed in the same light today.

Comedy is a really difficult area because when you parody something, you can't control how the audience will react. Alf Garnet was a comedy character who was a massive racist bigot, and you were supposed to laugh at him. But a lot of the audience were actually laughing along with him when he said horrible racist things.

Interestingly, I came across this letter to the Guardian that states that under race relations legislation she could legally be considered Black in the UK.

www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/14/rachel-dolezal-could-be-black-in-britain?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

'the law lord added: "Provided a person who joins the group feels himself to be a member of it, and is accepted by other members that he is, then he is, for the purposes of the Act, a member.”... Allowing discrimination by means of skin colour is a disastrous mistake for any country that wants to live at peace with itself to permit.'

Of course, that relies on other Black people accepting her as one of them. Which begs some questions: Which Black people? How many must acknowledge it? What if other Black people disagree? And surely if you take that to its logical conclusion, a group of white people could all get together, acknowledge each other as Black, and thus they'd be covered?

I guess one of the broader points here is that when someone from group A is in some way presenting as group B there are a whole load of different things that could be going on e.g.

• actor playing a part of B character (when is this acceptable or not acceptable?)
• genuine respectful immersion in B culture
• cultural appropriation
• pretending to be B for enjoyment
• decieving others for material gain
• living as B because its psychologically more comfortable
• identifying as B
• asserting they actually are B, perhaps shifting the definition of B

And the point is that how the person themselves represents what they are doing may not be how others represent it. e.g. Rachel Dolezal might say she is black , but others might say she is trying to deceive people.

I think there is an inconsistency with the way some people view transgenderism and transracialism.

We are not talking about men or women being discriminated about so stop trying to shift the point

YOU are not talking about this. WE are, YOU haven't understood that that is the actual point here.

Well, mixed race people can ID as any, all or none of their ethnic heritage. I think most people who get into trouble for not being black, or Asian or white “enough” are actually mixed race.

In addition, there are trans-race people. These are people of one race adopted and raised by people of another race, that then go on as adults to claim their ethnic heritage. It sounds easy, but it’s actually very hard. Because most often you’re raised in an entirely different culture. Think Chinese orphan raised by US white parents in Ohio. You grow up with different language, different concepts of family, of traditions, of religion.

Now as for the people clearly of race X, not mixed race and not raised by another race, but decide to claim they are race Y....its not the same as being a man wanting to live as a woman. Biologically, you cannot change your sex as you cannot change your race. But socially, you can change your gender to live as a woman.

I see nothing wrong with that and the more the line is blurred between man-woman gender construct, the more we get rid of gender itself, I see that as ultimately freeing and leading to equality between the sexes. I don’t care as much about who gets to claim actual victimhood for oppression of women. It’s about the future not the past.

It’s kind of a sad truth, but take for example historic women’s work....usually unpaid, when paid mostly women workers and of course underpaid. But when men start doing that work or those jobs, it suddenly gets better paid and more equal to jobs historically done by men to begin with. Take childbirth- once the exclusive preserve of women, now we have highly paid OB/GYNs...both men and women doctors. As opposed to an older woman of the village who popped by and assisted with childbirth in exchange for a chicken or whatever.

I think the same is happening here with men choosing to live as women and some women choosing to live as men. At the very least if they go through the surgery and then pass in society as opposite gender, they are getting a taste of what it is like to live without (or with) male privilege. In fact, it’s a shock to most transwomen and in my opinion, 99% of their discrimination claims are due to discrimination the experience not because they are trans, but because they’re being treated as if they were a born woman. And if you’ve lived as a boy/man and then start passing as a girl/woman, it can be a shock to lose that male privilege in society.

Well, mixed race people can ID as any, all or none of their ethnic heritage. I think most people who get into trouble for not being black, or Asian or white “enough” are actually mixed race

Other people will ID them as they see them. You can say you identify as white, but if you are obviously mixed race you are black to everyone but yourself.

@sneezypants

Well, mixed race people can ID as any, all or none of their ethnic heritage. I think most people who get into trouble for not being black, or Asian or white “enough” are actually mixed race

Other people will ID them as they see them. You can say you identify as white, but if you are obviously mixed race you are black to everyone but yourself.

Yes, but it goes both ways. You can also be mixed race, but “white passing” and the minority community will see you as white. So in that case, you can be put in a position, where neither community accepts you. You are too light to be black to black community, but not white enough to be white to white community. And it’s not always skin colour that decides this but other features like hair, eye colour, accent, culture, dress. Whether you were raised by black parent in black community or white parent in white community also has its part to play in determining how you are seen.

It’s more complex than “everyone else except yourself” for mixed race people. Rarely is there a consensus of “everyone” seeing you as one of the races you are. There is always conflict.

I disagree. I'm mixed race, and nobody has ever ever seen me as white. I'm far too black for that. There;s no conflict there at all.

Now as for the people clearly of race X, not mixed race and not raised by another race, but decide to claim they are race Y....its not the same as being a man wanting to live as a woman. Biologically, you cannot change your sex as you cannot change your race. But socially, you can change your gender to live as a woman.

But that only holds if "woman" is a gender, whereas for many of us on this board, being a woman is solely about our biological sex.

But even if we do say that you can live as a man/woman by behaving/dressing/presenting in a "man-y" or "woman-y" way, why isn't the same true for race?

I'm white and I can't change my physical race, but I could e.g. immerse myself in black culture, give myself a Nigerian name, emulate the hairstyles of black women. There are probably ways I could do that that would be more sensitive and respectful of black people, but none of those things would mean I ever really understood what it's like to be black, or give me the right to speak as a black person, or take up black spaces.

I think its the same for men and women.

But socially, you can change your gender to live as a woman.

I agree this only makes sense if you argue that women occupy some stereotyped social niche, which they don't. The only roles that are solely occupied by women socially are those that result from biology, such as giving birth, or being at a disadvantage in physical strength and needing separate spaces/categories.

Plus if by social role you mean appearance, then a white person could imitate a black person's appearance, with make-up, perhaps also surgery to change their facial features, and maybe stereotyped clothing that's seen as "what black people wear", and imitating an African or Jamaican accent. This would be in close parallel to a male having surgery, imitating stereotypically feminine hair, make-up and clothing, and imitating a female voice. Yet the first would be seen as massively racist and insulting, and the second is seen as your "true identity" and "brave" etc.

Well, I find it insulting in just the same way, that anyone thinks they are a woman and can claim access to women's SEXED spaces because of that surface, stereotyped and reductive imitation. None of those things give them an understanding of being a woman.

And then imagine if the people who performed all that insulting imitation of black stereotypes not only insisted they actually WERE literally black, and demanded to be given access to black literary prizes, grants, jobs in black organisations etc., but that people everywhere actually did take them seriously and started giving them these rights and accesses and writing them into law? And if, as a black person, you objected, you were cast as the evil bigot and stood to lose your job, and were subject to threats of death, rape and violence on twitter? But these threats were ignored by the police but if you dared to say "trans black people aren't black" then YOU could get investigated?

Starting to sound unpleasant at all? And perhaps deeply racist?

It is indeed, MrsBunHat, it is indeed.

It’s not more nuanced OP. You’ve hit the nail on the head.
Also, how is a cultural/racial identity any less of a spectrum than a gender identity?
Both are very clearly appropriation, one is offensive the other is apparently fine.

MrsBunHat

Sounds quite familiar there MrsBunHat.

yes, imagine if a board set up to decide on policy for racial minorities appointed people that only identified as those minorities (either decades ago or just 6 months ago). That would be seen as pretty problematic wouldn't it? Particularly if they then started insisting that their own agenda was prioritised when it did not benefit that group at all...

Oh and THEN (yes I am warming to my theme! :o) the people who were imitating a stereotype and claiming to be black, and who issued violent threats to black people who disagreed, started complaining that they were the victims, and it was the black people who wanted them dead, and that by daring to say they weren't black, the black people were murderers because the transblack people would be so upset they would be at risk of suicide. Oh and black people also weren't allowed to talk about issues that actually affected them, such as sickle cell anaemia, because trans black people would feel left out.

I could go on... and on... ....

Oooh. When I logged on to work this morning this thread only had about 12 replies!

Was somebody subMNing a notorious incident of an academic who was identified into a race classification? One who has now adopted another cause and has returned to public life?

twitter.com/DialloNkechi/status/1401939644187484165/retweets/with_comments

Both race and gender are social constructs. They also are hierarchies-intentionally so, I believe.
Ethnicity is real - ie your ancestors came from X part of the world. We call (pale-skinned?) Europeans “white” but who is permitted to be white and who is not has varied throughout history and still is contentious today.
There’s no such thing as the black or white “race” from a scientific perspective. Similarly, gender isn’t real. Nonetheless both concepts have real effects on humans
Obviously socially it’s a different matter now. Both concepts are here to stay because everyone has bought into it.

When you identify as an oppressed group member you both minimise and hide their struggle.

This is it. But we’re not supposed to mind.

I feel very sorry for Rachel Dolezal. Of course what she did was awful, but when you understand her early life and family situation you can see how it all played out. It's very sad but it doesn't mean the rest of the world should tell her she is, in fact, African American.

What can we do, then? Accept her for who she is, let her get on with living her life, and draw the line at her taking roles, spaces or support set aside only for black people, or BME people more generally, who require certain protections and support due to centuries of discrimination and oppression. That seems both fair and compassionate to me.

The bit I find weird is I actually think it should be the other way round if anything.

in today's globalised society race is very much a spectrum (genetically / scientifically a lot people are a multiple "races" ) i am not homogenous and my DH is a real mix! so self identifying as X makes way more sense to me vs jumping over a binary fence because scientifically over 99.9% of people have xx or xy chromosomes. Classification is unambiguous and a scientific fact not an opinion.

Yes absolutely- race is much more of a spectrum and a matter of identity than sex is - and yet we can all understand that some people are oppressed because of their ethnicity/ race and pretending to be them is insulting.

Gender is a massive spectrum but people should be able to pick and choose whatever gender expression they like, without it having anything to do with their sex. Much as you can enjoy whatever you like from all the world’s culture, but it doesn’t change your ethnicity, race, DNA etc.

When you identify as an oppressed group member you both minimise and hide their struggle.

Yes.

@guinnessguzzler

I feel very sorry for Rachel Dolezal. Of course what she did was awful, but when you understand her early life and family situation you can see how it all played out. It's very sad but it doesn't mean the rest of the world should tell her she is, in fact, African American.

What can we do, then? Accept her for who she is, let her get on with living her life, and draw the line at her taking roles, spaces or support set aside only for black people, or BME people more generally, who require certain protections and support due to centuries of discrimination and oppression. That seems both fair and compassionate to me.

I would feel sorry for her if her response to the outrage at her behaviour had been to stop, apologise and change her behaviour for the future. However a quick look at the "About Rachel" section on her own website shows she is still very much misrepresenting herself and clearly intends to keep doing so.