Greetings library bloggers! I’m new to the blogosphere and looking forward to engaging in the world of “electronic bantering!” I would like to take this opportunity to open up the discussion and invite others to comment on race matters. I noticed that previous blog entries were related to how Hollywood (film and television) deals with race, and also how race is handled in video games, but I wanted to broaden the discussion and include our personal lives. Race is such a complex, complicated issue in this country. There is so much history, culture and politics wrapped up in race matters.
First, do you think race matters? In other words, do you define yourself by your race? If so, how does that affect the way you see yourself and others? This seems like a loaded question, and one that might invoke a strong reaction, but I am always interested to know how we define ourselves, how that affects the decisions we make and how we lead our lives.
There is a school of thought that proposes that one day there will only be one race…the human race. Children born of parents of two different races, will continue to create children of different races until there is no “white,” “black,” “asian,” etc.” What do you think of this idea? Will this lead to more harmony between people? Or should we attempt to save, preserve and celebrate our differences? Food for thought…I would love to have your feedback and comments. Thanks!
March 25, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Wow! Where to begin. . . I think race does “matter” in our society– but what do I mean by that? Hmm. When I say race “matters,” I guess I’m saying that people notice race; people notice it and remember it, and tend to make generalizations about it, judgments about it, etc. I’m not saying that this *should* be the case, however, the I think the reality is that it does matter.
For that same reason, I often bristled when, during the presidential campaign, people would complain that Barack Obama called himself “black,” when actually he was “half white.” My feeling has always been that how people identify themselves is entirely up to them. Although his mother is white, I often ask, “If you never heard of Obama and saw him on a street corner, would you describe him as “white?”" We do notice skin color. I think there’s nothing wrong with noticing skin color, or racial features– but we have to get to a point where such physical features no longer cause us to make assumptions or generalizations.
I would always hope that as more families form between different races that eventually distinctions will be too difficult to make and therefore be irrelevant. But an interesting situation is in Brazil, where my brother lived for a few years. It’s very interesting situation there, in that, Brazil has a similar history of enslavement of people from Africa (they actually abolished slavery after the U.S.). But there was never the same stigma among the Portuguese/Brazilians about intermarriage, and Brazilians have a vast range of skin colors. However, many people there still identify themselves and others as “black.” From my brother’s perspective, it was hard for him to understand who someone would be talking about when a Brazilian would point and say, “The black guy over there.” His white American viewpoint had a hard time distinguishing such fine details– he thought all the people the guy was pointing to were “black”!
So I think that people will always see physical features (hair color, skin color, hair texture)– but my hope would be that we get to a point where we are just describing physical features and not make assumptions about people because of certain features.