laden with the weight of an infinite necessity

[kaigou]

I have an armband tattoo that's a family motto. It's not in English; it's in Gaelic. Yes, I do know how to pronounce (in Scots-gaelic, at least) because if it's going to be on my body, I should be able to at least say it properly. I didn't get it because I wanted secretly to be Scottish, or because I particularly like the Gaelic language; I got it because it's part of the family stories I was taught over and over, growing up.

If/when I ever return to Scotland to visit family friends, I expect I'll never wear anything that exposes this armband-tattoo. (Mostly because I can't imagine ever being warm enough there to wear something sleeveless, but that's beside the point here.) I wouldn't expose it because I've already had enough comments from folks in my life about it. "That's not English, is that Scottish? Oh, sorry, Gaelic? So you're Scottish? Do you speak Scottish, I mean, Gaelic? How do you say 'hello' in Scottish, sorry, Gaelic?"

(It is possible to have otherwise well-meaning Americans, who you tell you were born & raised in America, assume that you must speak a foreign language by virtue of your surname. Even if you've been in this country for six generations, it appears. If you get a foreign-language tattoo, just be aware: they're even more likely to assume this.)

Most of the time when I catch sight of this tattoo -- and it's hard not to, being on my arm, and right there in my face, or near enough -- I don't think, ohh, Scotland. I don't even think, ohh, not-english. I think, family.

Is this cultural appropriation of Scottish Things because I am a six-plus-generation American, with a non-English phrase on my arm? Is it a declaration of my own family's stories and a sign that they matter enough to me to have them indelibly stamped on my body? Or is it, as several folks in the occult community have asked, a sign that I'm particularly enamoured of S. L. MacGregor Mathers (from the Golden Dawn)? No, yes, most definitely no and the man wasn't even a MacGregor, thanks.

I wouldn't expose it in Scotland because yes, I'm aware I'd get defensive, doubly so if someone else were to get defensive at my obvious (if soft) Southern accent and my non-Scottishness, and take the tattoo as an emblem of "you did that because you thought it looked cool." Then I'd be defensive right back, having to explain because now my tattoo no longer just means "family" but just got saddled with some kind of imperialistic weight. Yet the thing is, that motto is the clan motto; it's not made up, it's not butchered, I know its history, I know the weight, and I chose it anyway because to me the weight of family outranks all of those.

(And besides, if I'd gone with the other major family clan, I'd have spent my life explaining why I had grip fast as a tattoo, and you can just imagine the comments that one would've gotten.)

---

I spent several hours this evening reading through a whole bunch of the posts on the latest internet flare-up falmes on cultural appropriation, a term that's unfortunately fuzzy in and of itself. (After some discussion, CP and I decided 'cultural imperialism' fits the negative connotations better, for us, and is enough of a clearly negative-laden word that's it far preferable to use, to make it obvious from the get-go when adaptation or appropriation stretches beyond "ooh, that's cool" into "I'm taking this over and my version is going to be the definitive one from now on.")

The acronym 'PoC' is the defining line -- person of color. That's been bouncing around in my head as a result, mingling with the revision process on my current WiP, whose protagonist is Sámi. If you were to see him in a line-up, you might think he's of similar Germanic stock as the traditional Finno-Scandinavian archetype: medium-blond hair, blue eyes, pale skin. By that standard, he's not really a person of color.

But as Sámi, he is as indigenous, marginalized, trivialized, and dismissed as any ruddy-skinned Navajo or Dakota. Even the research texts I've read list the same stereotypical complaints about Sámi as I've seen in discussions of indigenous Americans: alcoholic, stupid, lazy, probably a thief, up to no good, a drain on society. Yet when I look at pictures of Sámi versus pictures of my (Swedish) stepmother and her friends, sorry, but they look pretty much the same to me. Same strong jawlines, a range of hair and eye colors though tending towards paler, from short and stocky to tall and stocky. It's not like the Sámi have third eyes or sixth fingers or some other wildly apparent outward sign of their Sámi-ness.

I can't even tell from the majority of names, either. Most forenames among the Sámi are now Christian; most surnames now follow the Norwegian/Swedish patronymic (Ericsson, Sorensson, etc). But somehow kids in Norwegians schools can identify who among them is Sámi, and to this day show flare-ups of bigotry and racism.

However, the kid's still white-skinned, blue-eyed, blond-haired, yet I would be denying reality to say he's carried the privilege of class without taint throughout his life. Except am I still white-washing my fiction, because I picked an indigenous person who's... not indigenous-looking enough?

---

While CP and I were discussing this, I was trying to explain what it's like to be from the Deep South and walk into a restaurant in, say, Los Angeles, that claims to have Southern Family Cooking. If I walk in and the hostess is dressed like a knock-off Scarlett O'Hara, and the waiters are in black-face and straw hats and there's pictures of Aunt Jemima on the walls, I'm going to be offended. I'm going to be quadruply offended if someone tells me that this is an accurate representation of my culture.

(Sometimes I wonder why this is so. Wouldn't I be used to it, by now? Everyone in Hollywood on plays the "Southern accent" as meaning "stupid, bigoted, ill-educated", because slow talking is as slow thinking, unless of course the story calls for a feast and then it's always the Southerners who put enough on the table to make it start sinking in the middle, and at least that one detail is accurate, given my father's cousin's family had extra sawhorses just to keep the dining room table from collapsing in the middle.)

CP, on the other hand, saw this as 'ersatz' culture -- ignorant, perhaps, but not venial. He reminded me of the pizza place my sister went to, while she was in Ireland. She and several other classmates were all dying for something of home, and they had a weekend free and roadtripped to, hrm, I want to say Galway. They found a pizza place, and the six of them were just ecstatic. Until up walks one of the waiters, dressed in a Roy-Rogers' like shirt, bolero tie, BIG HONKING BELT BUCKLE, Wrangler Jeans, who says with a thick Irish accent, "Howdy, ya'll!"

Six American kids staring at him with their mouths open, absolutely unable to manage a response.

Until the Irish kid kinda did this little, "uhm, hello?" look and according to my sister, she and her classmates lost it. They laughed themselves silly, and ended up insisting every waiter come by to say it as well. They thought it was hysterical.

Maybe it was, but then, I'm reminded of truepenny's comment (in speaking of writing the Other) that seeing similarities is a "luxury [that exists] only from a position of privilege. You can be blind to the differences because they all work in your favor." What I'm twigging on here is the notion of things that "work in your favor": were the American kids not threatened by the Irish (mis)representation of their culture because, all else being equal, it's the American view that defines their world, and not the Irish mis-view?

Would it have been so funny if the six American kids were somewhere that this badly-slanted, one-sided, bizarro-world version were accepted as the de facto correct version of America? Or would it have been as offensive to them as I found it upon walking into a Southern Home Cooking restaurant in Boston and heaping insult on injury by dismissing me, and my offended reaction, as "taking it personally, geez"?

Was it that they could laugh because they had nothing to lose by doing so; that they could find humor because it had no impact on their schoolwork an hour's drive away? Was my offense because I knew that this was just a really in-my-face example of the way all my coworkers, my supervisor, my neighbors, saw me? Is it just that much harder to laugh when you got to a job interview and say hello and they assume -- based solely on your accent -- that you must be there for the receptionist position?

But middle of this discussion about what it's like to be from the Deep South and get this kind of attitude at me, as people look at me through the lens of the dominant-Hollywood version of What The Deep South Is Like and thereby judge me -- that I slipped up and threw at him something I should know better than to say: "well, look at you, you're operating from the privileged---"

Yes, before you ask, he did shut me down fast. Yes, he may look of fine Germanic (and, uh, Filipino) stock, but he was also raised in Asia. As he pointed out, for the entirety of his childhood, he did not live surrounded by people who all looked like him. He was the minority: linguistically, culturally, physically, even religiously. Jay Lake (with curiously similar coloring, heh) mentions similar experiences, though for him replace Asia with Africa.

The criticism in reference to Lake's post on this topic was, "[White men] seem to believe that they hold no ill will; if they hold no ill will, they cannot be part of the problem; if they are not part of the problem, they do not need to think about the issues any longer."

Now, granted, CP's description of the Irish and Southern restaurants -- as ignorant but hardly venial -- does superficially fit the "hold no ill will" veneer. But having lived with CP for coming on a number of years now, I think it'd be wrong to characterize him as thinking he's not part of the problem. It think it's something deeper than that.

I think it's, sometimes, a kind of dis/ease with the external impressions -- like mine, revealed just then -- that put him in category A when his own experiences are definitely categories B, C, some of D, and a few years of A but with a lot more years of the rest before ever getting to A. It's a sense of not being sure how to even tackle the problem at all, from what I can see, because the paradigms learned by someone from a multicultural/multiplicitous, daresay global, background, are just so radically different from those of us raised predominantly in a single, grounding culture.

I think of the photographer in Haiti, who's a Chinese Jew: where does he fit in? What culture does he 'belong' to?

Perhaps, is it that someone raised in such multicultural (all at once or consecutive) nurture/environment eventually reaches a point where the issues are perceived differently enough from those of us grounded in a main/original culture -- even as we observers see only the outward and assume this "no ill will" stems from the same uncaring as those stereotypical suspect "white males"? Can we really proscribe a monolithic mindset to someone solely based on having X skin and Y gender, especially if we then declare we have the right to protest like mad at the stereotyping of us for X skin and XX gender? Alternately, if you are raised to feel genuinely alien in your environment, does this produce a discomfort with the hidden step required for resentment such as I feel, about the Southern Home Cooking diner?

Because, when I say, "that's not the South!" what I am also saying is, "that is my culture, and you can't do that to it." For someone raised as effectively alien in their childhood, there is no culture to own. So the lack of ill will is not necessarily a dismissal so much as a lack of innate relation to that sense of possessiveness.

CP does not consider any Asian culture 'his', nor does he consider the Navajo culture 'his', nor does he consider Chicago or Virginia or anywhere else -- that I can tell -- 'his'. He has mentioned one or two places where he feels 'more at home', but it is not an unquestioning thing; it's not something he takes for granted, like I do the family's roots in Georgia or Tennessee. His apparent lack of ill will comes not from dismissing my ownership, but from having so little of his own.

The global child, I think, does not tread lightly because he pays no mind to the issues, but because he does not genuinely feel himself at home enough to own a position upon those issues.

---

It starts to feel like someone should be handing out scorecards.

If you're male, subtract ten. If you're female, add ten. If your first/only language is the dominant culture's language, subtract ten. If the language spoken in your home is not the national/dominant cultural language, add ten. If you're medium/olive-skinned where the dominant culture is white, add another five. If you're dark-dark skinned where the dominant culture is white, add ten. If you're light-skinned where the dominant culture is dark-skinned, add five. If you're Anglo where the dominant culture is Asian, add five. If you have pale skin and everyone around you is also pale-skinned, subtract twenty. If your family was top-5% wealthy, subtract fifty. If your family had to subsist on charity and/or food stamps, add fifty. If your family was middle-class, subtract ten. If your parents scraped by, add ten. If your elder siblings worked as soon as they were old enough to contribute to family expenses, add another five. If you looked the same as 75% of the people you knew, subtract twenty. If you looked like 50% or more of the people around you, subtract ten. If you looked like 25% of the people around you, add ten. If everyone around you looked like you, subtract forty. If no one outside your family looked like you, add twenty. If your favorite books were originally written in your native language, subtract twenty. If your favorite books were translated into your native language, subtract ten. If you had to learn some other language to be able to read anything as a child, add twenty. If your family's religion was the dominant-social religion, subtract thirty. If your family's religion was a major world-religion but still minority locally, add ten. If your family's religion was such a minority that you had to drive an hour just to attend services with the other five families who also drove an hour to all meet in the middle, add forty. Oh, and if your culture is usually represented as the Evil Guys, add twenty. If you're ridiculed and dismissed as ignorant yokels or stupid heathens, add thirty, because being a sidekick is far worse than being the bad guy -- at least the bad guy gets feared. The sidekick just gets killed, and never even gets laid.

And then, of course, we should find a way to adjust for the fact that we are a global nation, and a mobile one at that. So break your life out into decades, add up the values for each decade, approximately, and then divide by the number to adjust for comparing someone who's fifty years old versus someone who's twenty years old, just so we can be suitably fair about exactly how many Cultural Imperialism Points each person can have on their final score.

By that standard, I figure that my CIP-score is probably lower than CP's by between five to ten points. That Sámi kid -- for the first decade -- has a score of about plus-five, until he moved to Oslo and became a truly marginalized minority in his own right, at which point his score jumps considerably. My Methodist friend from HS with the Volvo-driving doctor-parents and the big house in the 'burbs -- oh, black friend, I should add! -- would have a substantially lower CIP-score than that Sámi kid. But, of course, the Sámi doesn't look like a person of color.

If that seems a little over-the-top, not to mention pulled out of a hat, that's because it is. Because for all that it's a terribly, terribly difficult and complex and emotion-laden topic, the experiences a person undergoes per culture is not monolithic, any more than we could say "African", like "Africa" is some kind of big contiguous space filled with tigers and antelopes in one massive Savannah and they all speak the same language and agree on the same things. Same goes for Europe, Asia, even the Americas -- to say, PoC is implying a kind of monolithic state that's just as wrong, just as ham-handed as saying "all white men believe X" and "all women choose Y" and "all Europeans like Z". It doesn't work that way, not in fiction, not in life.

Not, of course, that we could really go around quoting our CIP-scores, because that doesn't work any better than PoC, but at least with the CIP-score it's clearer to see where the problem lies. I say, my score is +5, but CP's score is +10. That doesn't tell you anything about how he, with apparent genetic bias of gender and basic appearance, could hit that level. Was he poor? Or from a marginalized religion? Or did he grow up where no one looked like him? Or were none of his childhood stories in his parents' native/home language? What got me to +5 when you might name six things about me that you'd think would put me at -10? Is my +5 somehow more, or less, valid, than the +5 of an Indian woman raised in the highest caste who went to private school in Bangalore and then attended one of the top boarding schools in France to get her high school degree?

---

I won't name the author (you'll find the link if you go looking, I'm sure) but this line really jumped out at me, in the list of links on this topic: A bunch of white guys talk about cultural appropriation. The first time I opened the post, I dismissed that link as easily as the author's own text. "A bunch of white guys talk about..." I actually heard myself pondering clicking the link for a split-second before skipping it, logic going, "well, what do I care about a bunch of white guys talking about it? probably just bitching about the White Man's Burden or something."

Except that it's a link to Jay Lake's post about being raised in Africa and having significant cultural impact on his world-view as a result of that -- even if you can clearly look at his icon and see (assuming that is him, and judging from other pictures I'm positive it is) that he's as Anglo-Saxon looking, overall, as CP. His post has a damn good point to make -- of whether one's childhood/external culture impacts one's world-view, even though this external/nurture element is nowhere visible on a person's body or gender or skin color -- and yet he's dismissed as one of "a bunch of white guys". Maybe the original link was supposed to be ironic, but without an introduction or context of some sort, I didn't take it that way. The only reason I ended up clicking was to make sure I didn't miss something, to grasp the poster's subsequent comments after the links, and then I read the post and thought, this is an important point.

The problem is, it's also a point that can kinda rankle if you're used to getting treated -- by virtue of your skin, or your gender, or your accent, or your whatever visual -- as though you're less-than-valid, and seeing someone who -- from all visual dogwhistles -- should have had 'the easy ride' per white/male privilege arguing that he, too, has had similar experiences... well. Yes. It can rankle, which brings us back to whether your +5 is more or less valid than my +5 and do we both have to shut up and beg forgiveness from the person with +20, even if we find out he's a blond-haired, blue-eyed, Sámi-boy? Does it change things that my +5 is over three decades and spread out through three major sub-cultures in one country, while his is two decades within thirty kilometers of his birthplace, while you've got four decades of life on three continents?

I mean, it's not like you can tattoo this shit on your arm, yo. And even if you could, I'd recommend against it. You'd just end up with people reading the +5-10+20 and asking you for the rest of your life whether you know algebra, and trust me, that's got to be right up there with people asking you how to say 'hello' in Gaelic. (For the record, I have no idea.)

---

Another observation from truepenny is that "But for some of us that empathic leap [of putting ourselves into the Other's shoes] is a luxury because the world we live in reflects our subject position back to us. We don't have to negotiate a culture that doesn't represent us or even recognize us--or represents us only as a stereotype."

I am part of the dominant culture. Kind of. First-generation middle-class on one side, third-generation on the other; sixth-plus generation American, college-educated, usually employed, or at least doing my best to fake it. Look at me, I have that luxury. And at the same time, I negotiate daily.

Because to a lot of the world, I am a stereotype, and I don't even get it half as bad as my mother did (with a strong East Tennessee accent), but I sure got enough of it when I lived in New England. Hollywood and media going back for a hundred and sixty years has turned me, and my cultural peers, into walking stereotypes. We are the slow-talking, funny-cadenced, potato-salad making, dim-witted, flower-dress-wearing, big-dinner-making Southerners.

When we're young, we're cute and sell you grape juice and Oscar-Meyer hotdogs. In our teens, we're the innocent fresh-faced girl-next-door unless we're the preacher's daughter in which case we've slept with every boy in town, some twice. In our twenties, we're the young wife who's got a kid and another on the way and still teaches Sunday School and isn't too bright but is just the sweetest thing anyway, insert jokes about marrying cousins (or siblings) -- unless we're the rare sassy girl who runs off to NYC or LA where we get treated even worse thanks to our small-town ways and our small-church values and that stupid stupid accent that tells everyone right off the bat that all we have between our ears must be potato salad recipes.

If we're white, we attended cotillion. If we're black, we picked cotton. We don't get to really show any sign of life until our fifties, when we're expected to wear funny hats -- regardless of skin-color -- and say witty lines and flirt outrageously and grow too many tomatoes.

Yeah, I'm negotiatin' yer freaking stereotypes, RIGHT HERE, BABY.

The issue should not be, is your experience of being stereotyped, of being marginalized behind someone else's definition of who-you-should-be, more or less valid than mine, but: we have all been there, and will be there again, and to understand the Other we must understand that we've gotten that too, and remember just how disgusted and angry and resentful it made us feel, too.

And not to do it to trot out our street-cred on marginalization, but to keep ourselves in perspective when we holler about whether we've got more, or less, right than anyone else. I do not spend all day looking at my skin color and defining myself by it, this is true, but I am acutely aware of my gender nearly all the time, so on that level -- yes, I can say: I have basis for relating to your resentment. What would I have wanted, can I offer you that, would that help you, concretely? It's at least a place to start. In return, being aware of that, I need to also remember that there have been times where I am part of the dominant paradigm; I'm not always the victim, either. Everyone gets their cards taken away from them. No card-playing.

Or more realistically: I can't take away anyone else's cards. But I do owe it to any sane discussion to try and lay my own on the table and refuse to play them. The drawback sometimes is that it seems the harder I try to listen, and think about stuff instead of playing on automatic... the better I get at putting my foot right in my mouth, up to my hip. Y'know, it's bad enough with ADHD the rest of the time, but when I add in general introverted social discomfort, boy, I can say some stupid things sometimes. Not intentionally (in a malicious sense) but just plain stupidity. I think of those cringe-worthy moments and look at posts like this and think, man, am I gonna regret this, too? It's a damn good thing my foot is mint-flavored, at least.

Back on topic: does this kind of think-first attitude do anything to help/bring-along those guys who are born male, white, and wealthy, in cultures where their parents' language and religion and values reflect that of the dominant paradigm? No. But then again, having known my share of guys from that background, I'm not sure anything much will help them short of a baseball bat, frankly. Or maybe send them all off to do two years for the Peace Corps, where their faces are not the faces they'll see around them every day, where they're the minority and must adjust to the majority which is not like themselves.

(Actually, maybe that might be a good idea. Hrm.)

---

Now, when matociquala writes:

...the difference between Ben Kenobi and a magical Negro is that Ben is not Other to everybody else in the film. And that's also the solution, right there. Because if you only have one of something, it automatically becomes a poster child.

I find myself thinking of the analogy of this post's title (from Albert Camus' statement, "We come into the world laden with the weight of an infinite necessity"), and to badly mix metaphors -- when you put all your Other-eggs into a single Other-type basket, it gets really freaking heavy, and you only need to drop it once to smash everything.

However, it can be boring and/or annoying to read someone's thought processes about characters in their own stories (and I've never written anyone else's stories to know their approaches so unfortunately I am stuck with my own), so I figured better to give you the option to skip, or to read if you so choose.


My head hurts. Maybe I should just take up knitting.



also, very much worth reading is zvi_likes_tv's post what I learned about tone.

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine ever being warm enough there to wear something sleeveless,

Ahem: while it's not appropriate to go sleeveless here in Edinburgh right now (there's a severe weather warning in effect and it's snowing heavily) most of the year I wear a tee-shirt. Probably not advisable in the highlands, but in the lowland cities it's fine (except when it's raining).

I am so not getting into the cultural appropriation mud-wrestling thing, but I will just take this opportunity to confuse the matter by noting that there's a certain type of American tourist you get around these parts who insists on wearing what they think is highland dress, kilt and all. This instantly flags them as (a) a tourist (because the only time most of the natives wear a kilt is for a wedding or formal occasion[*]), and (b) a bit of a joke (because the "highland dress" you see was invented out of whole cloth by the Victorians, who thought it was cute).

In other words? Cultural signifiers may not mean what you think they mean.

[*] "formal occasion" == "occasion for getting roaring drunk". Weddings, check. Likewise, some of the less friendly local football matches. In general, if you see a drunk in a kilt, they're a native; the sober ones are probably tourists.

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

DUDE. It drops below 72F and I'm putting on a sweatshirt. I was in Sweden in June and my sister and I were at the Swedish version of Kmart THIS FAST to buy their leftover stock of sweaters and sweatshirts. WE WERE FREEZING, while the crazy-ass Swedes are running around in tanktops and shorts. (Unsurprisingly, we did the same thing while in Scotland, many years before: in wool sweaters and stockings and all the Scots in Edinburgh in flip-flops and shorts. Crazy people!)

While we did buy kilts in Scotland -- because the quality was just unbeatable -- the only time I recall seeing anyone wear one was the Duke, who I suspect wore them because, well, he's the Duke, and he did sometimes do tours at the estate. And he [got dressed up when he] played the bagpipes every night for the cows, some kind of "they must stay happy or bad things happen to the family" tradition, though he told my mother it's because the cows were the only creatures on the planet who could put up with his horrible piping. He played for the seals, too, who were apparently the only other critters who liked his playing. So my memory of kilts? Includes cows, and seals.

Otherwise the only time I saw kilts growing up were for, well, formal occasions -- weddings, mostly. Some really formal dinner parties. Christmas parties. That kind of thing, not counting the obligatory Scottish festivals, which I always thought was cruel and unusual punishment -- it's July, in Georgia, and you're going to wear how many acres, I mean yards, of wool? That's just wrong. (Okay, my sister and I wore ours to school, but that's mostly because they pass as "plaid skirt" when on a girl, anyway.)

Ayup on the invention of the plaid, even if I can recognize which plaids are which, I still get the hugest kick out of the two guys who conned the entire Victorian court into thinking it was The Thing To Wear. Talk about appropriation to the nth degree.

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

I have nothing useful to say on most of your post (nothing wrong with your post ! I'm just not thinky enough for it :-) ), but I have thoughts about kilts and Scottishness :
I grew up in Australia, but my parents were originally from Scotland. When I moved to Scotland in 2004, I wondered if I'd end up feeling like I was Scottish, Australian, or some mixture of the two. I also wondered if I had the "right" to wear a kilt - was I Scottish enough to do it, or would that just be seen as "a bit naff" - and of course, there's always the risk of getting something subtle wrong that people growing up in Scotland would notice and object to. In the end, I did end up wearing my kilt[1] at a number of occasions (ceilidhs at conventions, and some work functions), and it seemed to work ok. I'm still not sure how Scottish I feel - I know what (one small part) of living there is like, but now that I've been back in Australia for a couple of months, even that is starting to fade into memory. ... clearly I need to think about this some more - thanks for your post :-)


PS In Scotland, they'll generally be known as "tartans" rather than "plaids".

[1] Ironically, I bought it in Tasmania (it was there, it was the right tartan for my father's side of the family, and it was a reasonable price :-) ).

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

I like Gerry Butler's (http://godsavethekings.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/kilt0005sl1.jpg) take on the kilt, personally. And I suspect he put that outfit together with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

Wait, does this mean my Utilikilt is okay or not? };->

[autopope.livejournal.com]

It's the absolute height of fashion -- with a beard, in certain bars in the pink triangle.

[http://users.livejournal.com/tesserae_/]

Well said. And the novel I'm writing is on a much smaller level dealing with some of the same multi-cultural questions, because I live in Los Angeles and I just can't imagine writing a story set in *this* city that's not full of people whose cultural backgrounds reflect the faces I see everyday. So I've been following the debates with a bit of trepidation, because I want very much to get it right, but right for values of the story I'm telling - so everyone gets a story of their own, but yeah, the story I'm mainly focused on is a middle-aged white guy dealing with issues I do actually know something about.

Gah. No conclusions. But I will say that as I build the story and try to fill it with interesting characters, some of those characters have been showing up with Chinese and Hispanic names - although I've got to say they all seem to be second or third or sixth generation Angelenos, and firmly middle class. At which point I get worried that they're all really white, and start to cry. My privilege, let me show it to you...

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I just can't imagine writing a story set in *this* city that's not full of people whose cultural backgrounds reflect the faces I see everyday.

Ayup. I think one of the best things about urban life (for a writer, but possibly for a lot of people) is to see a variety of faces, hear a lot of accents, be exposed to the notion that not everyone looks the same -- not just in theoretical on-television or in-books distance, but right there in front of you. When I did my roadtrip, the farther I went away from urban centers, the more I became slightly... well, at first, it was kinda like, "something's missing, something's... different, but what is it?" and then I realized: I was stopping in towns to sight-see and what I saw were people who weren't just all Anglo descent. In some cases they were all remarkably similar to each other in face/build -- talk about immigrants all moving into same small area! Hello, homogeneity.

A'course, the total other end was visiting San Francisco. I was bowled over (and excited by) the massive diversity of age and build and accent and skin-colors and lifestyles, and not neighborhood-by-neighborhood (like, say, Chicago) but all thrown in together. I never wanted to leave. It was awesome. No wonder people love that city, seems to me: it's a place where so many belong that any might belong.

Then again, currently I live in a city that's only one of, hrm, I think three in the US in which there's no majority. Anglos are, hrm, 40%, and Hispanic is 35% or something, with a quarter African-descent and Asian-descent making up the rest. Which I think is very much of the coolness because I want to hear what all the voices have to say, instead of getting one majority's take on everything. I get enough of that in mainstream media, thanks. The only drawback is that this city is more like Chicago, with most areas generally being enclaves of one ethnicity or another, instead of San Francisco's mingling. But, still, I can hope we'll head in that direction.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

My position on the issue of "cultural appropriation," like my position on "stealing someone's religion," is that there's no such thing. There are more or less faithful renditions of something that person A grew up with or believes in or otherwise holds near and dear to them, and those renditions which are less true to A's mental image of said N&D may or may not come from people from somewhere else, and they may or may not have been created cynically and knowingly different from A's image, but in no case are they "stealing" or "appropriation" or "colonialism" or "imperialism."

I know that some do not agree with my position on this. It comes up in academia, where there was a po-mo leftist fad on college campuses for a while, fed in large part by late twentieth-century French "philosophers" (white males all), whereby nobody was allowed to talk about anyone's "culture" other than their own, particularly if the talker was Caucasian and/or (horreur!) male, because that made it imperialist, colonialist, etc. ect. chizz chizz chizz.*

I think it's a crock. For one thing, there's no monobloc thing that is any given "culture." Person A's ideas of what their culture "is like" will be different from their next-door neighbor's idea, even if both have lived there since they left Olduvai Gorge. Second, the person "misrepresenting" person A's ideas about their culture may be from somewhere else, maybe even somewhere that a century ago had political control of A's country, but that representation is simply more or less faithful to A's image -- and being less faithful does not equal "stolen." For that matter, it is a given in cultural and ethnographic studies that while a researcher may not "know what it's like from the inside" (which is why the idea of the "participant observer" arose), they can often see things about another people that the people being researched cannot themselves see, being too close to things, so to speak. Third, and this is the hard one for most who disagree with me to accept, even if that representation is venal, racist, and belittling; even if it is a cynical attempt to put A and hir neighbors down or to cash in on the ignorance of others who know nothing about A's "culture," it still isn't "stealing" it, it's just a collection of phony racist bullshit. The Aunt Jemima Restaurant (anyone remember Sambo's btw?) isn't a "cultural appropriation" of southern "culture," any more than the Protocols of Zion are a "cultural appropriation" of "being Jewish" -- it's just a racist mishmash.

I think what often most bothers the person who feels the victim of "appropriation" is a concern that third parties who know no better will come to think that the ersatz version is the real thing. I understand this concern, and have shared it on occasion ("all Thelemites worship Satan and sacrifice babies!"). I think the answer is to correct misapprehensions when we can, rather than to react with wrighteous rath at some alleged "cultural appropriation."

And I'd love to visit Scotland (though not, perhaps, in Winter). I promise to not say "hoot, mon" and "wha's a glaikit gommeril noo, eh?" Even if I can't wear my Utilikilt.


* (A chizz is a swizz or swindle, as any fule kno.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Then what matters to you -- if I'm getting this right -- isn't the issue of 'cultural appropriation' (and its attendant 'just what culture do you think you're stealing') but that the issues of cultural imperialism do cause harm?

Because I would say that the Yankee preference for seeing Southern culture as filled with dim-witted potato-salad-makers very much harmed my job opportunities. It was the first time in my life (outside issues of gender) that I got a taste of the notion that "because you are X, you can only do job Y" -- run a laundry, be a maid, work construction -- and I sure as hell didn't like it, not one bit. That's not necessarily appropriation, sure, but it is a kind of imperialism: we won, you lost, we get to decide what's said about you. That kind of thing.

In which case, if you replace issues of cultural 'appropriation' and replace them with 'imperialism' -- from the blatant to the more subtle, such as that hiding in the use of pidgin, like we've discussed before -- how does that change your reaction?

For a people/person suffering under colonization, I would think to have an ersatz impression of your culture rammed down your throat is insult to injury. Not, of course, that it makes it any better to have a genuine representation of your culture bandied about by the imperialist power -- or perhaps to have a genuine version might even make it worse. At least if it's ersatz you can try and console yourself with, "that's not really us, those aren't really our sacred stories they're turning into bad cartoons on Saturday mornings." Perhaps.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

"That's not necessarily appropriation, sure, but it is a kind of imperialism: we won, you lost, we get to decide what's said about you."

That might be a whole new can of worms, actually. That's the unavoidable truth that history is written by the victors and the vanquished, if they are lucky, get to be the "noble savage" or the "cute native" of the narrative, no more than that, and that's if they aren't cast as a bunch of demons from Dante's nether hells and their reputation forever more is that they're the people who are at best useless dangerous knife-waving drunks and at worst eat babies and sacrifice to Baal.

That's not cultural appropriation. That's cultural obliteration. Cultural genocide.

It's happened, in human history. Oh, it's happened.

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

Then what matters to you -- if I'm getting this right -- isn't the issue of 'cultural appropriation' (and its attendant 'just what culture do you think you're stealing') but that the issues of cultural imperialism do cause harm?

Only if we are using "cultural imperialism" as another way of saying "prejudice." -- otherwise, I don't find the term meaningful as it's normally used. Since it's loaded with connotations of someone's culture being conquered, I would think the only thing that can properly be called "cultural imperialism" is when the ersatz notions about someone's culture are forced back onto that someone, and they are made to live under the misrepresentation instead of what they used to have. For example, if the BIA had not stolen children and forced them to go to schools where their native languages and customs were forbidden, but instead had gone onto the reservations and forced the people there to live some Saturday morning caricature based on "Pow Wow The Indian Boy." (Sherman Alexie nicely skewers this kind of cultural imperialism: "This ain't 'Dances With Salmon,' you know.")

Because I would say that the Yankee preference for seeing Southern culture as filled with dim-witted potato-salad-makers very much harmed my job opportunities. It was the first time in my life (outside issues of gender) that I got a taste of the notion that "because you are X, you can only do job Y" -- run a laundry, be a maid, work construction -- and I sure as hell didn't like it, not one bit. That's not necessarily appropriation, sure, but it is a kind of imperialism: we won, you lost, we get to decide what's said about you. That kind of thing.

Right, and that's why I don't like to call this "appropriation" but rather just plain pigheaded prejudice. As to whether it's "imperialism," I know that the idea is that as with political imperialism, the conquerer gets to say what's real, but I'm still not entirely comfortable with the term being used in this context for a number of reasons. For one thing, that image of Southerners (a nebulous term, IMO) as either (a) ignorant goobers, or (b) Nouveau Riche plantation owners with no real sense of class, far predates the Civil War, and was no more imposed on people living in the South by Mssrs. Sherman, Grant, et al, than the image of the Yankee pedlar out to rip you off was invented by Stonewall Jackson. These caricatures existed for many years prior to the war. For another thing, the caricature of Southerners as backwoods hicks has persisted not because of a campaign by the Northern Raj, but because of popular culture. (Which, I would point out, has also presented an opposing view with southern role models from Davy Crockett to Flo to Fried Green Tomatoes.) So I'm not sure I am as comfortable with the label "imperialism" as I am with just plain ignorance, racism, and classism.

[tatterpunk.livejournal.com]

The problem is, it's also a point that can kinda rankle if you're used to getting treated -- by virtue of your skin, or your gender, or your accent, or your whatever visual -- as though you're less-than-valid, and seeing someone who -- from all visual dogwhistles -- should have had 'the easy ride' per white/male privilege arguing that he, too, has had similar experiences...

I believe that you, and quite a few other people involved in these... happenings... are confusing white privilege with majority privilege.

It's an easy mistake to make, especially since most of us (English speakers) are coming from predominantly white environments. But they are not the same. Consequently, the white male raised in a non-white culture and a POC living in one of the predominantly white countries have not have "similar experiences."

A white male, no matter what country he is raised in, doesn't have to search hard to find stories about people like himself. Perhaps the books/television shows/movies are not as easy to find as they would be in other cultures, other countries. But they are out there, and accessible. Alternatively, people of color can have trouble finding stories about people like themselves, written by people like themselves, or written in their own language, all the while living in their own country. (http://deepad.livejournal.com/29656.html?format=light)

A white male raised in a non-white culture is aware he is a transplant, an immigrant, a fish out of cultural waters -- and this is a unique and enlightening experience in of itself. But it is not the same as being a native of a country, the daughter or son of generations, and being cut off from that history. To have the ways in which your family, or the families of people like you, contributed to the creation of your country ignored or trivialized or simply buried. (http://bossymarmalade.livejournal.com/478159.html)

It's the difference between growing up in a place while thinking, "this isn't really my world," and growing up while knowing that while it is your world, you have been born into the middle of a longstanding struggle to deny your place in it.

A lot of this goes for white women as well, not just white men, and I won't pretend otherwise. But being white and male -- man, those are the big tickets. I can name you known, important white men who have been disabled or gay and nevertheless have acknowledged places in the history of literature, politics, scientific discovery, philosophical thought. It's still easier to name such men than white women, or anyone of color, who is given nearly as much deference in such fields. (That's while we're still factoring heterosexual or abled privilege; take that away and pickings are fucking slim.) Wherever you go, the stories and history and importance of white men is acknowledged. It may not be front and center, it may not be the main focus, but there is no country in the world where it does not matter.

This is what it means to have white privilege. Not that you have been given an "easy ride."

[tatterpunk.livejournal.com]

(con't)

All things being equal, it would be just as hurtful and deconstructive to undervalue someone's contribution to a discussion for being white and male as it would saying "you're a woman/disabled/a person of color, so you don't really understand." But things are not equal. One man's experience doesn't do much to counter centuries of history, dominance, and power which have become an integral part of how we view the world. Growing up in the minority doesn't prevent the reception of white privilege, which permeates countries across the globe.

This doesn't make someone unable of understanding those who lack this privilege, any more than someone who grew up in a racially homogeneous community is incapable of tolerance. It just means that your personal experience is not a guarantee of any deeper understanding.

Many people seem to take offense at the idea that white people have something to prove in these discussions. But this is simply the reversal of privilege -- in almost all other areas of life, it's everyone else who is asked to listen better, learn faster, prove themselves worthy of the same rewards. And then there's the question: well, it's not fair there, so why is it fair here?

Because when a white person says I want to counter racism, I want to understand the world better -- all the while benefiting from white privilege and (this is the crucial part) refusing to acknowledge that it has shaped his/her life -- it's hard to take them seriously.

And the problem is that in these discussions those lacking in privilege are deeply vulnerable, because the discussions are not started to educate those with privilege, but to create a safe space. This is the gathering noise of people who for so long have been denied a voice, and it's terrifyingly obvious that those with privilege are in no way above, consciously or unconsciously, using the weapons at their disposal -- coded language, social hierarchy, or simply the assumption of unquestioned right -- to try and shut these conversations down when they feel threatened.

And that's the crux of it: that when they say, "white people, it's not actually about you," what they mean in it's not actually about white people, or how they are expected to response or what place in the discussion they're owed. So when a bunch of white men (or women) have their feelings hurt because no one really wants to listen to them right now, that concern is peripheral. There are other things at stake for people of color, and no internalized global system is going to protect their interests, so they need to take a different approach in order to get shit done.

It isn't "shut up, you're white and male and don't matter." It's: "Shut up. For once -- for once -- let's hear the other side of this story."

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

all the while benefiting from white privilege and (this is the crucial part) refusing to acknowledge that it has shaped his/her life -- it's hard to take them seriously.

I think what you're calling privilege is what I'm calling class. If it is, then maybe that's why I keep looking for the terms I expect (classism) and not finding it, and getting confused. Maybe because for whatever reason I think of privilege as one-up, one-down, while 'class' is a more mutable, varied thing -- lower class, middle class, upper class, and the levels between.

Where it's not exactly (or only) that one benefits from privilege -- wait, let me think this through. Maybe it's that when we say 'privilege' then this becomes something we can separate from ourselves, like if we 'give up' something to equal the playing field. But to say 'classism' is much like 'racism' in that how do I 'give up' my perception that people who don't know how to set a table are less valuable than those with proper manners?

Privilege is also something that's easier to broad-brush, too: I am privileged as a member of the dominant, western, mainstream, whatever culture. I lose that (to some degree, at least) when I don't speak the language or know the customs, etc. What I don't lose is my classist perception. Yes, I'm a guest in this country and must politely wait my turn etc, yet part of me still thinks, "oh gawd, he's chewing with his mouth open, how tacky." To 'lose privilege' becomes doubly-hard, to do and to parse, when you discount the role of classism. I think.

To use a really inane example to make sure I've got you right: "hard to take seriously" when someone wants to understand is like trying to explain your point when someone's looking at you and obviously thinking: he can't even conjugate verbs correctly, and was that a double-negative? What an ill-educated (read: lower class) moron. Oh, uhm, yeah, I'm listening! Totally listening, and would you stop biting your fork? Please. Thank you.

As Gore Vidal said, "it's not enough to win; others must lose." That's the thing about not recognizing the classism within privilege -- that privilege is winning, but classism is making sure the other person loses. You can refuse to win, but what's the point if you still put forth an unconscious effort to make sure the other person loses even more?

So when a bunch of white men (or women) have their feelings hurt because no one really wants to listen to them right now, that concern is peripheral...

I think what sometimes baffles me, too, is that I figure a reasonable reaction to the "white person feelings hurt" syndrome is (works best if person is also female) to say, "hey, do you remember that time you were complaining about how that jerk passed you over for a promotion and picked a guy instead even though you were better qualified? and the men around you got offended like you were talking about them, and how pissed-off it made you feel to coddle their insecurities to the point no one was listening to you anymore? yeah? okay, do try to keep that in mind, thanks."

Because that, I've been there, and that kind of analogy talks to me immediately. I can get that.

So, guys (or other outsiders) have to know when to shut up, or at least be willing to shut up, when they're told to chill out, at least for awhile. But the hard lesson I had to learn from being on the speaker's side is that people don't just "know" when it's okay to start adding back in, or how. When it is okay, I have to say so. Otherwise it's not dialogue, in the end, just one monologue and I don't see that as any more constructive than silence. Okay, it can be healing for the speaker, but I'm not sure what it concretely fixes in the long run if it's left at that.

But that analogy also means I can relate to the outsider who says, okay, I'll listen but I'd really like at some point to have some idea of what I, personally, can contribute to make sure this doesn't get repeated. And in the meantime I at least promise to try very hard not to wince visibly when you end your sentences with prepositions. (Joke. I'm not that bad.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

white privilege with majority privilege

I agree, but part of how I process things (to go from "I hear what you're saying" to "okay, I get it now") is to figure out whether the words used in my head match what someone else is saying, meaning-wise, and to revise/retry when they don't -- and right now I've reached the point of "I don't think cultural appropriation really fits, as a complaint/title, for what's going on." It's too vague, it's too fuzzy, it's almost too euphemistic.

Because it does make it possible to conflate majority with privilege, and you're right that the two are separate, if overlapping.

Consequently, the white male raised in a non-white culture and a POC living in one of the predominantly white countries have not have "similar experiences."

Well, yeah. If I came across as saying that they do, I didn't intend to (and will revise if I can figure out where I did) -- my point about experiences was that the person raised in non-home-culture does not have similar experiences with person raised in home-culture, so I find it questionable to declare that all people based on skin-color X are going to say/do/feel the same way and thus should be automatically dismissed (or even automatically listened to).

And by the same token (ahem), I don't think I could draw a bead between POC-alien versus nPOC-alien, either. The experiences aren't the same, and each carries its own attendant issues for the individual -- my point in scorecarding was to note that where I get really really frustrated is the "my experience was more experiencing than yours", like if we knew who'd really suffered more that this experience gives them credibility automatically and anyone with a lower score should shut up and sit down and not even bother intruding, contributing, offering, pick a verb.

What gets me, personally, is the notion of a monolithic sense based on any one thing -- when there's an added weight no one seems to be naming in any of the discussions: class. I wasn't raised to be racist, but I sure as hell was raised to be classist, whether or not my parents intended such, and I'll probably spend the rest of my life being acutely aware of the innate bias, that prompts kneejerk reactions when class-lines are crossed.

Because I'd further clarify that you must be white, male, and middle/upper class and then you've got it covered. The lower the class, down you go, although that's hardly reassuring considering that women just get pushed down even further, then. Thing is, I see absolutely no mention anywhere of class, at all. Is it that much of a dirty word? Or is everyone regardless of skin color trying to pretend we're a classless world? Or is it just easier to point at a skin color and use that to define for good or ill? Is it because class (sometimes) is more mobile? Or what? I dunno, myself.

It's the difference between growing up in a place while thinking, "this isn't really my world," and growing up while knowing that while it is your world, you have been born into the middle of a longstanding struggle to deny your place in it.

I would say that this is the intersection, then, where women (regardless of color) could see where their experiences run alongside, to at least enough degree to become allies -- as well as GLBT peoples. Not in a patronizing "we're from the other subculture and we're here to help" but in a cross-cultural alliance. Uhm. And stuff.

I'm losing words. Need chocolate.

I keep writing these crazylong comments.

[tatterpunk.livejournal.com]

my point about experiences was that the person raised in non-home-culture does not have similar experiences with person raised in home-culture

The do not have similar cultural experiences -- one white person will experience American culture (that oh so specific thing), say, the other Somalian (ditto).

But both will experience white privilege. Both will benefit from it. And in scarily similar ways, regardless of their physical location in the world. That is the point which POC place their finger upon and say: "There. Right there, you are not like us."

And who can debate that? You have to be white -- or pass for it -- to receive white privilege. (And to receive it while passing, wow, that's an issue in of itself which makes it not quite the same.) It doesn't automatically lead to rightness or wrongness on either side, but it is an experience which simply cannot be shared.

I find it questionable to declare that all people based on skin-color X are going to say/do/feel the same way and thus should be automatically dismissed (or even automatically listened to).

I don't think anyone is saying that. You can link me to specific comments if you think we're viewing different angles of this discussion. It's not that the views and opinions of white person A are expected to be the same of white person B -- it's that people are saying, you and you, both have white privilege. The story changes when you don't, and right now we are clawing out a space in which that story can be heard.

What gets me, personally, is the notion of a monolithic sense based on any one thing -- when there's an added weight no one seems to be naming in any of the discussions: class.

When people joke about these kefluffles happening on a cycle, they're not kidding -- there was a big class and race discussion. Here (http://vom-marlowe.livejournal.com/121097.html) is one of my favorite entries from that time, and I'm sure if you root around you'll be able to find further reading from that particular period, if you're interested in what people said when class was the issue. (Here (http://blindprivilege.com/white-trash-blues-class-privilege-v-white-privilege/) is another favorite.)

Thing is, I see absolutely no mention anywhere of class, at all. Is it that much of a dirty word? Or is everyone regardless of skin color trying to pretend we're a classless world? Or is it just easier to point at a skin color and use that to define for good or ill?

Class isn't being discussed because it simply isn't the issue. No one is complaining that it's "too hard" or a "damned if you do/don't" situation to write about characters from a different class. (In scifi/fantasy, land of stable boys with big destinies? Or princes on noble quests? Please.) The original letter was about the portrayal of CoC by white authors and how those portrayals are received by and directly affect the lives of PoC. Asking why no one is talking about class is like walking into a Women's Studies lecture and asking why they don't offer Men's Studies. As much as you can't equate Oppression A with Oppression B, you can't expect a discussion of a particular social ill to be an open invitation to debate all the world's problems.

And, without getting too drawn into a tangled web: it is different. You cannot change your color. You cannot tell class at a glance. History doesn't lack the narratives of the working class. No one is complaining of a dearth of working-class heroes.

Again, it's not a question of greater or lesser. It's just that you can't swap in one for the other and continue the discussion without a hitch. It's a different discussion.

[tatterpunk.livejournal.com]

(con't)

I would say that this is the intersection, then, where women (regardless of color) could see where their experiences run alongside, to at least enough degree to become allies -- as well as GLBT peoples.

Hell, there is nothing preventing white, straight, abled men from becoming allies as well. But it goes back to the white privilege thing -- lacking other privileges doesn't kick this big one. Did you ever read Good Omens (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Omens)? There's a line in there that reminds me of white privilege, about how a particular psychic couldn't see a character's aura for the same reason "people in Trafalgar Square can't see England."

White privilege is SO huge, SO all-encompassing, SO prevalent, that a common experience among POC is that people lacking in other privilege will have the attitude of "let's work together to fight social evil," all the while only addressing the concerns of white people. Because they don't actually know where that ends and the problems of everyone else begin.

It's a huge, problematic blind spot. And I'm not saying it's a damnable offense -- I haven't seen anyone who is -- but it has certainly taught POC that white privilege can be a snarling creature of its own unique breed.

Especially when it comes to feminism, wow. There's a long and glorious tradition of shafting women of color for the "greater good" of the movement at large, starting with Susan B herself. This doesn't keep me from wishing to honor the achievements of women who identified as feminists, or clinging stubbornly to that label myself. But when people express surprise and dismay that women of color may not hold the same rosy-colored view of the movement, I always want to ask: "You own history books, yes?" And then there's the complications in the GLBT community, from race queens to the "black people are homophobic" meme and oh, man. Suffice to say there is a surplus of evidence that "lack of other privilege" does not automatically equate with "white ally."

Whether you wish to continue discussing this stuff is of course entirely your call. Just know that if I'm a little long in replying, it's because I'm in a different time zone. (I should have been asleep HOURS ago, honestly.)

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

Regarding cultural imperialism (love that term!) and marginalisation and such--I'm not 100% sure where I'd fit on the list, but possibly somewhere in the positives (grew up in a Bible-based cult, of Appalachian and Native American stock, family was borderline between poverty and middle class).

Where it gets really amusing--and weird--is with the Native American stuff, to be honest. I along with my mom's side of the family is of Cherokee descent, but we aren't "Dawes Act Indians"--that is, we're not on a tribal roster, we don't get the nifty benefits (like scholarships) for being "Federally Recognised", but you can find my relatives on the rolls and we *do* know technically what clan we'd belong to. (Basically my ancestors managed to sneak off the Trail of Tears and proceeded to, like a lot of Cherokee families in western and central Kentucky, play themselves off as "black Dutch" and the like.)

Many of the members of my family (including my mom and (deceased) uncle and grandpa) *do* pretty well look like they stepped off the rez, and in their time there *was* a lot of secrecy and shame still about being of Native descent (technically, my grandfather would have been an illegal alien--NDNs didn't get citizenship till 1924--so there is actually kind of a reason *why*), and my uncle was the first to really look into this stuff...whereas me, my sis, and other folks grew up in what was really the first period where it was cool to acknowledge you had some Native ancestry and all.

Now, the "weird" bit--I honestly don't think I look *all* that NDN. Yeah, I have long hair, yeah, I have the cheekbones, but I also freckle and tend to be pale (I think I inherited the Irish skin from my dad and my mom's non-Cherokee ancestors :D). Certainly not as much as some of my other relatives, though (including my uncle, who--during the Bad Old Days of segregation in the South--was literally banned from white bathrooms because he was so dark-complected people thought he was mixed).

Apparently the rest of the planet thinks I stepped off the rez, though. :D People are always striking up convos with my folks at powwows and at the Qualla Boundary in the "OMG ONE OF US" sense, and had people striking up convos with me at the Museum of the American Indian (in Washington, DC) like "OMG TRIBAL MEMBER". Fuzzies-inducing, yeah, but a bit weird. (Though less weird with the Museum, as they do acknowledge there's a lot of "non-Dawes Act Indians" out there.)

So at least to *other* folks I apparently *scream* "ooh neat INJUN". (That, or I tend to get confused for being Korean. Go fig.)

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I think it's tatterpunk (above) who mentions the additional issue of "passing" as just really complexifying the issue above and beyond belief. My best friend from HS told me once about her family's annual reunion -- I recall from HS, she'd attended in Alabama and it was like 500 people already. Then, around when we hit our late 20s, someone in her family (of our generation) did the research and discovered the family goes back to three kids: black father, white mother. Two of the kids could "pass" and married whites; one didn't, and married a black woman.

Fast-forward back to the present, and suddenly there's this entire branch of the family (and nearly as large) who are NOT BLACK. My friend was okay with it, a little startled, but okay overall; it was her parents and their generation and older who were freaked out, even more than the freaked-ness levels reported for their contemporaries in the white side of the family. It was kids our age and younger who were like, "okay, whatever, but how are we going to fit 1,000 people into one place for a family reunion?" Heh.

A good friend in college was Navajo/Ojibwa, and talking about being half of each yet raised in the 'burbs with a mother who denied being Indian even at all nunh-unh, etc (attended rez boarding school with nuns, I'm sure you know the story). I did the math and told my friend this means I was 50 pounds of Scot, 30 pounds of French, 25 pounds of Dutch, 10 pounds of Irish, 25 pounds of British, and about a pound and a half of Iroquois.

Which meant if I lost that last ten pounds, I could at least get rid of the Irish. We don't like to admit to having let them into the family, anyway.

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I do agree, "passing" complicates things. In my mom's era, there was still a really heavy emphasis on "passing", the "your great-grandpa was an escapee from the Trail of Tears" was pretty much just seen as a family legend (till the family tree DID trace things back to the last roll before the Removal, heh).

Even funnier--I do have relatives that DO pass pretty well for "white" (my aunt, who is forever pissed because people think she's part of the Wannabe Tribe, LOL). I myself have a hard time seeing how it's so obvious with me (even if I'm *not* wearing stuff like mocs--I do wear mocs, not just because of OMFG NDN PRIDE but because they're damn comfy, and the type I tend to wear aren't even my tribal style because softsole mocs suck walking on concrete :D). So this gets to show up quite a bit. :3

Myself...as far as we know, it's mostly Cherokee and Irish and maybe some English (though we do have some questions re my dad's side of the family, what with his family having some names like "Tennessee" and "Alabama" as first names, if you dig far enough back :D). I joke that this means I like my alcohol, I just can't put it down. :3 (Which gets funnier if you realise that the Cherokee were one of the few Native American groups that actually *did* invent a form of beer. Passion-fruit mead, actually. :3)

And more fun with misconceptions

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

The WEIRDEST one I ever experienced (and this actually does tie into cultural imperialism) was when I walked into a hardware store (after I'd just gotten married) to get some nails to hang up stuff--Flower Power Hippie at the checkout counter asks "Are you Native American?"

"Well, I have some Cherokee ancestry but I'm not like a Federal NDN or anything..."

"Can you do a rain dance?" she asks.

"Ma'am...my family has not lived on the reservation since the 'rez' was technically an independent *country* some 150 years ago. My folks aren't what you'd term traditionals. I don't know any rain dances, and from what I've been able to research, the Cherokee never had rain dances..."

This did not deter the Hippie.

"Make one up. The trees need it."

I stood there for a good five minutes, my brain having gone into a BSOD going...DOT DOT WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK NO SHE DID *NOT* JUST ASK THIS HOLY SHIT...my husband eventually had to walk me out, my face *still* frozen in shock.

No, seriously, "do a rain dance, the trees need it". WHAT THE HELL. Mind, I'm probably the first person in about 150+ years in my family to explore traditional Cherokee spiritual practices and all (and I make no claims to being a shaman or even terribly "traditional" because I'm not a part of a traditional religious society like the Nighthawk Keetoowah or Snowbirds and I tend to be pretty darn eclectic spiritually, and am reluctant to describe myself as tribal--yeah, I do have pride in my Cherokee ancestry, but still...) but a) my ancestors never had rain dances, b) I'm eclectic but not that damn eclectic. O_o

Hippie dear, just because I have some Cherokee ancestry does *not* give me Special Spirit Shaman Mojo (tm) to talk to the Sky People and make it rain. You're just as capable as I am, dear. :3

Re: And more fun with misconceptions

[christeos-pir.livejournal.com]

So... how about a nice buffalo hunt instead?

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

Okay, first, you OWE ME A KEYBOARD.

Second, yes, that is a sterling WTF moment that just blows away any WTF moments ever. Total. OMGWTF squared. Trebled!

Although it does remind me of when I met up with an old friend after many years and he showed me his tattoo in progress. A big honking buffalo that covers his entire back. He was all, "so what do you think? pretty awesome, hunh?"

Me: Hon. Aren't you, uhm, Chickasaw?

(Full-blood, in fact.)

Him: Yeah. What about it?

Me: Didn't your family come from, uh, Georgia? And weren't there, like, no buffalo by the time you got to Oklahoma?

Him: Yeah. So?

Me; It's a buffalo. With a plains headdress.

Him: I really liked the design. And buffalo! They're awesome!

Me: Uh.

Then again, when we parted ways at the end of the evening, I got in my car with the little orange Ganesha on the dashboard (given by an Indian coworker when he found out I love elephants), and since I can't really say there were ever elephants in Georgia any more than there were buffalo... heh.

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

"people asking you how to say 'hello' in Gaelic. (For the record, I have no idea.)"

Depends on the time of day. Of course.

"My head hurts. Maybe I should just take up knitting."

Knitting is the only thing that keeps me from hurting people, sometimes. Cheaper than therapy.

But anyway.

Yeah, by all rights I suppose I should count myself as fairly privileged, except that I had my own moments -- plenty of them -- of being the outsider, most of which you hit on. It certainly doesn't make me a 'victim' or anything, but I think it's given me a definite sympathy for the underdog.

Yeah, I think a few years of being outsiders would really benefit most privileged white males, and more than a few privileged white females I've met. Can we start a letter-writing campaign encouraging President Obama to draft Young Republicans into the Peace Corps?