I saw this amazing story on CNN this morning. A woman’s home had been burglarized before, so she set up an internet webcam to monitor her home. When she pulled up the live feed from work one morning, she saw two guys robbing her house. She dialed 911 and said, “I’m watching my home on live monitor, and there is a black man in my house, and he is robbing it.”
It’s interesting that she said “there is a black man in my house.” If she were a politician, her career would be over, justified or not–it’s not politically correct to identify a criminal as black, unless someone asks, much the same way it stirs up people’s emotions when someone identifies a math geek as Asian or a rice chaser as white. In this case, however, I wouldn’t fault the woman–she was under stress, and the fact that the burglars were black is the only characteristic evident from the web footage.
I have met people who don’t use race to describe people. One of them is a parent of high school kids who said that he purposely avoided using race descriptions when raising his kids in order to get his kids accustomed to thinking of people as people rather than as races. It’s interesting speaking with him because he only mentions race if it’s in the context of a larger discussion (“The Kims, who are from Korea, gave my daughter this beautiful doll that they picked up on their last trip.”). This father talks about race issues, such as the need for diversity, but he doesn’t assign races to individuals unless it comes up in the discussion.
How do you talk about race?
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I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
I hate to disagree with you two posts in a row but… How would a politician’s career be over by saying black man? obviously using another very negative term would but simply black man?
I disagree it would be the end of the person career.
I do agree with the parent that if race is not necessary to mention seems leaving it out will make a person think more about the individual than a “race”.
Thanks, Lingyai.
I see it happening this way–if the conversation went exactly as it did, where the racial info was unsolicited, someone would step forward and say of the politician that “all he thinks about is race.” A congressman, for example, would say, “there’s a black man in my house,” and the next day, some talk show host would say something like, “The very first thing Congressman Smith noticed was that the robber was black. This is the mindset of the people who represent us.” Then all the phone calls would come in, along with the calls for resignation. It would be death by innuendo.
You may be right. I don’t know. I think it would be a liability unless the info were solicited. I guess a skillful politician could still survive it.
I don’t agree with that parent who refuses to mention race because he wants to “see the person, not the race.”
This is a very popular canard that you hear in America all the time, and it shows a problematic understanding of race and social identity in general.
What’s wrong with this idea of not seeing race?
First of all, the mainstream American definition of individual doesn’t acknowledge that all individual identities are powerfully influenced by broader social factors … like race (or its related concept of ethnicity).
For instance, if you were White instead or Asian or Black or some other minority in the USA, don’t you think that you would be a different person than you are today?
Being a racial minority can powerfully shape your experiences, your worldview, values, and ultimately your very identity. Your life chances, socio-economic position, and thus experiences would most likely not be the same if you were Black instead of White.
However well-intentioned he is, when that parent says he doesn’t want to mention race, what he’s effectively saying is that he wants to DENY an important part of someone.
The same could be said for other forms of social identity like gender, class, sexuality, nationality, etc.
Would you ever hear someone say, “I don’t want to see gender; I want to see someone as an individual”?
But, gender would have a similarly powerful influence how an individual’s identity is formed in the first place. If you were a woman instead of a man, chances are you would be a very different person.
Finally, there is another reason why this racial denial/colorblind claim is problematic: the definition of individual is–in terms of race–a de facto White definition.
White identity, culture, and values are hegemonic, which means they have been accepted as unquestioned norms that everybody is expected to conform or assimilate into (i.e. The Melting Pot).
When people say that they are just an individual not a race, what they are often saying is that they are just a (White) individual.
There are the reasons why I fundamentally disagree with these Colorblinders or Race Deniers, as I call them.
Children at some point will always see race.
We teach them to differentiate between two things – they learn by distinguishable associations – so why not skin color especially when most people the will see are one color, who’s the odd one out?
I would say the trick is to figure out when it is appropriate to put in race and when it isn’t.
On the one extremes it isn’t okay to talk about race at all – when our children notice them we tell them to hush! to be quite. We tell them that race isn’t real and as much as possible to ignore what your mind is telling you – not to use it.
On the other extreme, we could use race in every context possible, being as associative as possible creating and passing negative and positive images along.
I think that this is the line that Jaehwan refers to as in context. Using race as an important piece to effectively communicate a position/view, instead of a pedestal to be associated various things.
And I don’t think it’ll end someones career – it’ll just cause them a great deal of stress and greif until they offer an apology that’s good enough for the mainstream – and the rest of the story is swept under a rug because they’ve apologized for all the wrong reasons. Betty Brown? Miley Cyrus? (I like to think of Disney stars as politicians, they teach our children so much about the world)
I think it’s like Jason says–sometimes it’s appropriate, and sometimes it’s not.
For example, let’s say a customer comes to see me at my office. Is it appropriate if the receptionist gets on the PA system and says, “Byron, there’s a black man here to see you”? Probably not, because customers ought to be treated as people, rather than people of certain races. On the other hand, if there’s a protest at OSU over the treatment of African Americans, it would definitely be appropriate to mention the fact that the protesters are black.
One can say that it’s similar in other fields. What if my friend’s daughter dated an Asian guy. Would I be comfortable if he said, “Byron, you won’t believe this, but my daughter is dating a Chinese dude?” I’d probably be okay with it, but all things considered, it would probably be better to have my friend evaluate the Chinese dude on his non-racial characteristics.
(Now if he said “My son’s a Rice Chasah, that might be something we could talk about…)
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