Cultural Litmus Test, Nonjudgmental Version - and yes, some racefail
I want to preface this entry by stating clearly two things as a disclaimer:
1. This entry is not meant to criticize, belittle, attack, chastise, or judge anyone reading this journal.
2. This entry is not a manifesto meant to imply or state that I somehow have White Person Cultural Diversity Cred™ because of my geographic or cultural origin.
I decided to write this entry as a result of a discussion that was touched off by Willow and glockgal's statements that I mentioned here. The discussion to which I refer, which arguably is a tangent given that it doesn't directly address the Avatar castfail discussion over on racebending, happened in an entry on my flist.
The question was brought up, in light of discussion of a blog entry by Ami Angelwings about her experience at a Chinese New Year parade in Toronto, as to whether or not St. Patrick's Day and Chinese New Year can be seen as Canadian celebrations or if both retain a distinct cultural marker that is distinguishable from a theoretical construct of Canadian identity, e.g., St. Patrick's Day in Canada is still seen as Irish and therefore separate from mainstream Canadian identity, a discrete cultural celebration the way that Chinese New Year's is a discrete cultural marker that is not part and parcel of a larger Canadian identity. The argument was put forth that both St. Patrick's Day and Chinese New Year suffer from stereotypes that make them "not Canadian."
I don't live in Toronto, but I have some issues with that supposition. I suspect that part of my disagreement stems from the fact I am from San Francisco, I grew up in San Francisco and Berkeley, and the City still remains my home.
I suspect that this concept of whether or not a cultural day of significance/festival/religious observation/holiday is considered as deviating from a value-neutral white identity differs throughout North America, be it Canada or the United States, precisely because we are talking about a huge-ass piece of real estate comprised of huge cities, small towns, and vast tracts of wilderness.
I don't live in Toronto, but I can say this about the United States: given that there are so many people of Irish ancestry that comprise American society, and given that Irish people are considered part of the Whitey McBleached Pallidson tribe and have been thoroughly acculturated and absorbed into mainstream American white identity, I consider St. Patrick's Day to be a mainstream American celebration, not some exotic Irish celebration.
Everyone gets in on St. Patrick's Day here. It's no longer relegated to some ghetto in the Mission where only Irish people need celebrate and cavort. It's not exotically othered as OMG IRISH. It's thoroughly commercialized (and yes, it is somewhat fetishized as quaintly Irish in origin, certainly, there are Hallmark cards, and in general Americans of all races and ethnic origins use it as an excuse to make stale jokes, wear green or get pinched, get drunk off their asses, and act like Plastic Paddies that probably piss off the real Irish people brooding on their stools over at Ireland's 32. The Irish (and people of Irish ancestry) are no longer oppressed in the United States; they have white privilege, they have contributed hugely to American culture, and are therefore part of Eurocentric American cultural constructs. They have, in a word, been appropriated, incorporated, and dropped into the giant blender of American culture. Yes, we do get a St. Patrick's Parade in some major American cities, but the actual amount of Irish people marching in those parades seems to diminish with each passing year.
My point is that here in the States, St. Patrick's Day is considered an inclusively American celebration; it's been subsumed into American culture, and American culture still has predominantly white Eurocentric constructs as its foundations. It's been co-opted, absorbed, and reshaped into something American. I don't know whether or not it's really that way in Canada - perhaps it is. I'll be curious to hear the views of the Canadians on the flist.
So let's talk about Chinese New Year and the perspective of someone from San Francisco AND the experience a person from Toronto might have if they wandered into San Francisco during the Chinese New Year Celebration.
In San Francisco, Chinese New Year is parsed two ways: natives and longtime locals consider it a San Francisco thing, and of course it's obviously of Chinese origin, but it's also an integral part of San Francisco culture (and Bay Area culture by extension) and identity. To argue otherwise demonstrates an appalling lack of knowledge of the Bay Area.
Chinese New Year in San Francisco can consist of non-Chinese people running around wishing each other Happy New Year and invading the streets hours before the parade starts to snag a choice piece of sidewalk from which to watch the parade. City Hall sponsors celebrations. All the local news media covers the big parade in real time. Half of San Francisco joins in, dancess, celebrate, sets off fireworks, and, increasingly, are part of the performing troupes.
So I have to wonder how differently Chinese New Year is celebrated in Toronto compared to a city like San Francisco. Yes, I'm aware that Toronto is a diverse and liberal city.
In SF, Chinese New Year is considered a San Franciscan celebration, not something ghettoized and othered. This city was built by people of color (many of them Chinese people) and poor European immigrants. Consequently, Chinese New Year has been celebrated here for a long time. SF has had dark periods of vicious racism, obviously, but it also has this mixed legacy of a strong labor movement, Populism, libertine tendencies, and progressive politics borne largely by the fact that we have a shitload of diversity here.
In the post-WWII context, Chinese New Year has been incorporated into an important part of the city's identity and culture. (Pride Week has been incorporated into City culture the same way - gleeful news coverage during the Parade, the whole city decked out in rainbow flags, etc.)
If some asshole told a celebrant of Chinese ancestry to "go back to where you came from" during Chinese New Year in SF, I suspect they'd be neatly removed from the city limits by an angry pan-racial gang of enraged people and then exiled to San Bruno. Fuck, our mayor might take time out of his busy schedule to personally do the booting (I don't even like Gavin Newsom that much, but he's the goddamn mayor of San Francisco, and he is usually spot on when it comes to issues of race).
But we have racist assholes here - we do. Maybe it's just that they know better than to open their mouths during Pride and Chinese New Year and Carnaval and the Cherry Blossom festival and Dia de los Muertos and Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth. Yes, we celebrate all of those, too, and we do it loudly and with abandon.
(There's another smaller demographic of the city -- largely recently arrived people and tourists -- who probably view Chinese New Year as an exotically Asian thing for Asians and by Asians and as a tourist attraction. But those people just aren't significant in number, at least in my experience. No one cares about them.)
But perhaps San Francisco is singular in its embracing and integration of things like Chinese New Year into the mainstream culture of the city, something that happens every year and in which HUGE numbers of people get involved. The San Francisco Police Department has their own dragon troupe, our mayor participates in the parade, and our Chinese New Year celebration is the largest Chinese New Year celebration outside of Asia.
This wasn't easily achieved, of course - Chinese people have been living in San Francisco since 1848 and suffered vicious racism in every possible form in the 19th and 20th centuries (and still do, albeit perhaps in subtler form). But the inexorable cultural mix of San Francisco means that even with the bigotry, the racism, and the periodic attempts to disenfranchise, it was inescapable that the Chinese (and numerous other groups of Asians) became woven into the fabric of what makes San Francisco San Francisco. Other cities outside of Asia, of course, have totally awesome Chinese New Year celebrations, but ours is a grand spectacle, and I will stand by that assertion until I die. (And, of course, the giant illuminated dragon is one of my favorite parts.)
It makes me wonder how different San Francisco is from other large cities in North America and Canada.
And thus, a poll was born.
Poll Litmus test #1: Cultural diversity where you live
Edit of Poll Fail: Argh. I meant to make the first polls check boxes instead of radio buttons, because that leaves no room for cities/towns that celebrate more than one of the things listed above. So, if your city/municipality does celebrate more than one, let me know in the comments.
As if that weren't enough, I have pictures and videos to poll you about!!
Poll Litmust test #2
This is how we roll in San Francisco during Chinese New Year - we get White Crane's lion dancing:
(If you think lion dancing is easy, you need to get off my flist right now.)
As you can see, the streets are packed, people are shrieking and applauding in joy, and sheer amount of firecrackers set off during your average San Francisco Chinese New Year's Parade is enough to deafen any deity that happens to be listening in.
I love this lion dancing troupe that started attacking passerbys. LULZ. I've seen these guys, and they are awesome.
Here, since we're on the subject of My City is Cooler Than Yours, is how we start our Gay Pride Parade:
Nine minutes of dykes on tricked out bikes:
Every time I'm at Pride, I'm always surprised at how many bar hoppers there are in the Dykes on Bikes contingent. But there are a few Ducatis in there, and I think I even spy a Cagiva!
Since I'm already litmus testing you like nobody's business, and since we're talking about North America and I've seen some SERIOUS racefail lately on the subject of Native Americans, the First Nations, etc. - yes, both inside and outside SFF fandom - let me ask you this, flist:
Can you identify any of the below without cheating and reading the titles of the video clips? Can you?
Poll Litmust test #3
Poll Litmust test #4
Poll Litmust test #5
Poll Litmust test #6
(LISA ODJIG, BITCHES. THAT'S RIGHT.)
See, I often labor under the misapprehension that everyone in North America just automatically knows who all of those people are and what kinds of dancing they're doing.
So ask yourself the next time you want to engage on the topic of racism and cultural diversity in an American or Canadian context: do you even know who these people are and what the below represents?
These are the people that Patricia Wrede erased from the North American continent in The Thirteenth Child. (Well, except for the Cinco de Mayo revelers.) These people have faces, voices, and living, breathing identities. They live here. And you found them inconvenient.
Fuck you, Patricia Wrede.
(This reminds me to dig up schmevil's epic racefail when she tried to wholeheartedly defend Jason Aaron's Scalped and denied that any problematic tropes exist in Aaron's treatment of Native American characters. I felt dirty for days after being exposed to her lily-white fail on that subject.)
Edit of Cultural Appropriation: It occurs to me that Dia de los Muertos is another cultural marker that San Francisco has COMPLETELY co-opted, but to the point of dilution.
1. This entry is not meant to criticize, belittle, attack, chastise, or judge anyone reading this journal.
2. This entry is not a manifesto meant to imply or state that I somehow have White Person Cultural Diversity Cred™ because of my geographic or cultural origin.
I decided to write this entry as a result of a discussion that was touched off by Willow and glockgal's statements that I mentioned here. The discussion to which I refer, which arguably is a tangent given that it doesn't directly address the Avatar castfail discussion over on racebending, happened in an entry on my flist.
The question was brought up, in light of discussion of a blog entry by Ami Angelwings about her experience at a Chinese New Year parade in Toronto, as to whether or not St. Patrick's Day and Chinese New Year can be seen as Canadian celebrations or if both retain a distinct cultural marker that is distinguishable from a theoretical construct of Canadian identity, e.g., St. Patrick's Day in Canada is still seen as Irish and therefore separate from mainstream Canadian identity, a discrete cultural celebration the way that Chinese New Year's is a discrete cultural marker that is not part and parcel of a larger Canadian identity. The argument was put forth that both St. Patrick's Day and Chinese New Year suffer from stereotypes that make them "not Canadian."
I don't live in Toronto, but I have some issues with that supposition. I suspect that part of my disagreement stems from the fact I am from San Francisco, I grew up in San Francisco and Berkeley, and the City still remains my home.
I suspect that this concept of whether or not a cultural day of significance/festival/religious observation/holiday is considered as deviating from a value-neutral white identity differs throughout North America, be it Canada or the United States, precisely because we are talking about a huge-ass piece of real estate comprised of huge cities, small towns, and vast tracts of wilderness.
I don't live in Toronto, but I can say this about the United States: given that there are so many people of Irish ancestry that comprise American society, and given that Irish people are considered part of the Whitey McBleached Pallidson tribe and have been thoroughly acculturated and absorbed into mainstream American white identity, I consider St. Patrick's Day to be a mainstream American celebration, not some exotic Irish celebration.
Everyone gets in on St. Patrick's Day here. It's no longer relegated to some ghetto in the Mission where only Irish people need celebrate and cavort. It's not exotically othered as OMG IRISH. It's thoroughly commercialized (and yes, it is somewhat fetishized as quaintly Irish in origin, certainly, there are Hallmark cards, and in general Americans of all races and ethnic origins use it as an excuse to make stale jokes, wear green or get pinched, get drunk off their asses, and act like Plastic Paddies that probably piss off the real Irish people brooding on their stools over at Ireland's 32. The Irish (and people of Irish ancestry) are no longer oppressed in the United States; they have white privilege, they have contributed hugely to American culture, and are therefore part of Eurocentric American cultural constructs. They have, in a word, been appropriated, incorporated, and dropped into the giant blender of American culture. Yes, we do get a St. Patrick's Parade in some major American cities, but the actual amount of Irish people marching in those parades seems to diminish with each passing year.
My point is that here in the States, St. Patrick's Day is considered an inclusively American celebration; it's been subsumed into American culture, and American culture still has predominantly white Eurocentric constructs as its foundations. It's been co-opted, absorbed, and reshaped into something American. I don't know whether or not it's really that way in Canada - perhaps it is. I'll be curious to hear the views of the Canadians on the flist.
So let's talk about Chinese New Year and the perspective of someone from San Francisco AND the experience a person from Toronto might have if they wandered into San Francisco during the Chinese New Year Celebration.
In San Francisco, Chinese New Year is parsed two ways: natives and longtime locals consider it a San Francisco thing, and of course it's obviously of Chinese origin, but it's also an integral part of San Francisco culture (and Bay Area culture by extension) and identity. To argue otherwise demonstrates an appalling lack of knowledge of the Bay Area.
Chinese New Year in San Francisco can consist of non-Chinese people running around wishing each other Happy New Year and invading the streets hours before the parade starts to snag a choice piece of sidewalk from which to watch the parade. City Hall sponsors celebrations. All the local news media covers the big parade in real time. Half of San Francisco joins in, dancess, celebrate, sets off fireworks, and, increasingly, are part of the performing troupes.
So I have to wonder how differently Chinese New Year is celebrated in Toronto compared to a city like San Francisco. Yes, I'm aware that Toronto is a diverse and liberal city.
In SF, Chinese New Year is considered a San Franciscan celebration, not something ghettoized and othered. This city was built by people of color (many of them Chinese people) and poor European immigrants. Consequently, Chinese New Year has been celebrated here for a long time. SF has had dark periods of vicious racism, obviously, but it also has this mixed legacy of a strong labor movement, Populism, libertine tendencies, and progressive politics borne largely by the fact that we have a shitload of diversity here.
In the post-WWII context, Chinese New Year has been incorporated into an important part of the city's identity and culture. (Pride Week has been incorporated into City culture the same way - gleeful news coverage during the Parade, the whole city decked out in rainbow flags, etc.)
If some asshole told a celebrant of Chinese ancestry to "go back to where you came from" during Chinese New Year in SF, I suspect they'd be neatly removed from the city limits by an angry pan-racial gang of enraged people and then exiled to San Bruno. Fuck, our mayor might take time out of his busy schedule to personally do the booting (I don't even like Gavin Newsom that much, but he's the goddamn mayor of San Francisco, and he is usually spot on when it comes to issues of race).
But we have racist assholes here - we do. Maybe it's just that they know better than to open their mouths during Pride and Chinese New Year and Carnaval and the Cherry Blossom festival and Dia de los Muertos and Cinco de Mayo and Juneteenth. Yes, we celebrate all of those, too, and we do it loudly and with abandon.
(There's another smaller demographic of the city -- largely recently arrived people and tourists -- who probably view Chinese New Year as an exotically Asian thing for Asians and by Asians and as a tourist attraction. But those people just aren't significant in number, at least in my experience. No one cares about them.)
But perhaps San Francisco is singular in its embracing and integration of things like Chinese New Year into the mainstream culture of the city, something that happens every year and in which HUGE numbers of people get involved. The San Francisco Police Department has their own dragon troupe, our mayor participates in the parade, and our Chinese New Year celebration is the largest Chinese New Year celebration outside of Asia.
This wasn't easily achieved, of course - Chinese people have been living in San Francisco since 1848 and suffered vicious racism in every possible form in the 19th and 20th centuries (and still do, albeit perhaps in subtler form). But the inexorable cultural mix of San Francisco means that even with the bigotry, the racism, and the periodic attempts to disenfranchise, it was inescapable that the Chinese (and numerous other groups of Asians) became woven into the fabric of what makes San Francisco San Francisco. Other cities outside of Asia, of course, have totally awesome Chinese New Year celebrations, but ours is a grand spectacle, and I will stand by that assertion until I die. (And, of course, the giant illuminated dragon is one of my favorite parts.)
It makes me wonder how different San Francisco is from other large cities in North America and Canada.
And thus, a poll was born.
Poll Litmus test #1: Cultural diversity where you live
Edit of Poll Fail: Argh. I meant to make the first polls check boxes instead of radio buttons, because that leaves no room for cities/towns that celebrate more than one of the things listed above. So, if your city/municipality does celebrate more than one, let me know in the comments.
As if that weren't enough, I have pictures and videos to poll you about!!
Poll Litmust test #2
This is how we roll in San Francisco during Chinese New Year - we get White Crane's lion dancing:
Click to view(If you think lion dancing is easy, you need to get off my flist right now.)
As you can see, the streets are packed, people are shrieking and applauding in joy, and sheer amount of firecrackers set off during your average San Francisco Chinese New Year's Parade is enough to deafen any deity that happens to be listening in.
I love this lion dancing troupe that started attacking passerbys. LULZ. I've seen these guys, and they are awesome.
Here, since we're on the subject of My City is Cooler Than Yours, is how we start our Gay Pride Parade:
Nine minutes of dykes on tricked out bikes:
Every time I'm at Pride, I'm always surprised at how many bar hoppers there are in the Dykes on Bikes contingent. But there are a few Ducatis in there, and I think I even spy a Cagiva!
Since I'm already litmus testing you like nobody's business, and since we're talking about North America and I've seen some SERIOUS racefail lately on the subject of Native Americans, the First Nations, etc. - yes, both inside and outside SFF fandom - let me ask you this, flist:
Can you identify any of the below without cheating and reading the titles of the video clips? Can you?
Poll Litmust test #3
Poll Litmust test #4
Poll Litmust test #5
Poll Litmust test #6
(LISA ODJIG, BITCHES. THAT'S RIGHT.)
See, I often labor under the misapprehension that everyone in North America just automatically knows who all of those people are and what kinds of dancing they're doing.
So ask yourself the next time you want to engage on the topic of racism and cultural diversity in an American or Canadian context: do you even know who these people are and what the below represents?
These are the people that Patricia Wrede erased from the North American continent in The Thirteenth Child. (Well, except for the Cinco de Mayo revelers.) These people have faces, voices, and living, breathing identities. They live here. And you found them inconvenient.
Fuck you, Patricia Wrede.
(This reminds me to dig up schmevil's epic racefail when she tried to wholeheartedly defend Jason Aaron's Scalped and denied that any problematic tropes exist in Aaron's treatment of Native American characters. I felt dirty for days after being exposed to her lily-white fail on that subject.)
Edit of Cultural Appropriation: It occurs to me that Dia de los Muertos is another cultural marker that San Francisco has COMPLETELY co-opted, but to the point of dilution.