Still figuring myself out racially. Part 1: Being of pan-Mediterranean heritage

[johanna_hypatia]

When I think about how to understand my racial identity, it gets so complicated as to defy definition.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, I'm classified as "white," because they define that category to include people from North Africa and the Middle East. As a Sicilian, I look to my North African Berber and Arab heritage as much as I do to

Comments

[virginia_fell]

There is no one Arab skin color (though some shade of brown or olive is typical, especially in the Arab heartlands). The absence of a defining color bar must be upsetting to a racist society like white America, where the color bar was all-important in structuring American society.

It's so hard to be America when the universe refuses to re-order itself to suit one's own idea of natural whitenesssuperiority. D: D: D:

[johanna_hypatia]

That's right!
But there are a lot of Americans who do have a clue.

[ex_idragosa]

I've always just considered you to be part of the human race. *wink*

[laura_seabrook]

I hate ideas about race, because even people who say they don't believe in it, seem to buy into the concept of "white"

[johanna_hypatia]

It's easy for the privileged to dismiss all "labels" as meaningless, when those labels have not been a means of oppression for them. But for those who are defined with such labels by the power structure, whether they want to be defined by those labels or not, they don't get to choose to have this imposed on them. It is. Although the concept of "race" lacks all scientific validity, and is a prime example of a pseudoscience--one that has now been thoroughly exploded-- it still has a very heavy reality for those who live within a racist system. It can't just be dismissed as insignificant. It will never be insignificant for the unprivileged, because it's at the root of their oppression. So unprivileged people are forced to engage with these "labels" whether they like it or not.

A picture is worth a thousand Sopranos episodes

[johanna_hypatia]

One hundred years ago, Sicilians in America were classified as nonwhite. At some point (probably after the United States allied with Italy in World War I) they decided to have us be white.

I'm guessing this resulted from the famous photo of the Allied leaders at the Versailles conference--

[cmcmck]

A famous photo that one. It is also easy to forget that the individual to whom Orlando is chatting is David Lloyd George- Welsh working class and probably of equally humble origins.

It is so often forgotten that in the UK, class often trumped race as a social disadvantage. It is still the case- to the extent that Trevor Phillips, head of the equalities commission (and a PoC) has got himself into trouble with the white, politically correct, chattering classes, for daring to suggest the white working class in the UK are now an oppressed minority! .

It's been slightly amusing to watch fellow commission member, Ben Summerskill (also leader of Stonewall UK, as you probably know and the son of a peeress) being totally unable to check his privilege and flouncing out in a huff because a member of a racial minority (and also, btw, of working class origin) dares to question his attitudes towards minorities and his snobbery towards the working class......ironic, much?