Twitter Conversation

[fantasyecho]

Inspired by katherineokelly's comments in my latest Linkfest, I threw a question out to the Twitterati:

what if, instead of using the term "white", we used the term "European American"?

(ETA: Since tweeting this, 4 people have re-tweeted it, including @vonslatt, THE Jake von Slatt of the Steampunk Workshop.)The responses are various. I will introduce folks as

Comments

[yeloson]

I don't know you personally. I think I either saw you post something on LJ or saw you retweeted on Twitter, read some of your stuff and thought you'd be an interesting person to keep up with.

Norwegian/Scottish/Irish-Canadian here.

[affabletoaster]

See, I just don't identify as American at all. ;)

But I do like European-Canadian.

[caitlin_chan]

Honestly, I'd never thought about identifying myself ethnically unless specifically asked, and then it's "oh, I'm Irish-Scottish-Wels-English-French-Spanish; a big ol' Western European mutt here!" But otherwise? I'm Canadian - culturally and in nationality. On my mother's side I'm first-generation Canadian, but on my dad's I'm... something like tenth or thirteenth or something, because that part of my family came over just before the potato famine.

[fantasyecho]

Yes, and I could argue that culturally, Canada is still very much a product of European colonialism. Much like Malaysia is a product of colonialism. Not having to identify yourself ethnically is part of your privilege. My family went down to Malaysia three generations ago and I still have to identify myself ethnically!

[tariq_kamal]

Whereas I don't have to.

(I'm ethnically Malay, by the way -- technically half Javanese, quarter Chinese, and a mix of fractions that add up to a quarter of both Indian and Siamese Malay).

Malays in Malaysian society have the privilege of thinking of themselves as just Malaysians. Even "real" Malaysians. Everyone else can be considered a "pendatang" (immigrant / newcomer / interloper) or can be safely ignored, like the Orang Asal (lit. "the original people" -- the first inhabitants of our peninsula).

Note that this is all Peninsular shit. The East Malaysians have a problem with us not thinking about them.

[divabat]

I was using Anglo-Saxon personally, since a lot of what I was trying to describe as "white" culture was really British & Brit-export (America, Canada, Australia). Then European (western or eastern) for things more specific to that area.

I'm technically part-Caucasian but would never be regarded as such :P

[fantasyecho]

AHA! Do tell!!

[divabat]

Er, a large chunk of my family tree is Indian. Caucasia is the region around North India and Turkey and stuff in between. I also have some part of my family tree from Uzbekistan so I'm pretty sure they'd be Caucasian. Of course, not being white, no one's going to take my claims of being Caucasian (in part) seriously.

Why, were you hoping for something titillating, a family scandal? That's just buying into the stereotype, and rather rude.

[fantasyecho]

Actually, I got exactly what I was expecting =D A total explanation based on geography which, I think, really disproves the idea that Caucasian necessarily means "white". A lot of people I meet think Caucasian means white, and only apply the term to what we understand as European, or of European descent. They don't think about the people who are ALSO Caucasian but don't fit the definition of "white". Which is why I like hearing from folks who can explain it a lot better than I can about that term.

[tariq_kamal]

LONG TWITTER CONVO IS LONG.

Not making me want to join twitter back again, though.

What was the consensus when we had our conversation? When you want to emphasize the spectrum between the Caucasians and the Asians, we'd use Caucasian-American; but when we want to emphasize the power differential we'd use European-Americans?

Something like that.

[fantasyecho]

.... I don't recall any of that D:

[tariq_kamal]

You don't? Hmm. You want I start digging on our chat logs or something? It's all on the cloud anyway.