General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I am Latina but pass as White [View all]Igel
(35,300 posts)Whatever the problem, whatever the effect, the first cause many look to is race. Those who can't find a cause for some problem in race still are urged by many to first look for a racial cause for every effect possible.
When you look at stats for race, they're either black/white/Nat. Am/Asian or they break them down black/non-Latino white/Latino (etc.) or use the official term "Hispanic".
However, in my lifetime there's been this alternative push to redefine racial boundaries as white/non-white. Sometimes it's been for political solidarity and power-oriented coalition building. Sometimes it's been because some whites see the racial breakdown that way and it's easy to stereotype. Sometimes because it's safest to assume ill-will on the part of others, whatever that means for the present state of social capital in the US and the future of social capital in the US.
Among many who go with the primary classification being white/non-white, there are those who need to further break down demographics into smaller racial categories. If "Latino" isn't a coherent racial category, it undermines the entire idea that for every effect we should seek a racial cause. For those people, this causes too much cognitive dissonance. "Ethnic discrimination" has less of an "this is absolute evil" tinge to it, and allows for changeable surface characteristics and not innate, genetic traits to be the reason for the discrimination. That leads to nasty, hard-to-win arguments. Race is safe space.
Had a friend who asked if I considered him white because he was told (by somebody who wasn't) that he, too, wasn't. I said yes, he was white, and it really confused him. When he asked a bunch of other people, he got a huge range of responses. "Yes, you're white." "No, you're brown." "You're not black, so you're white." One even responded, "How can you be white, you're Muslim?"--that all-too-common confusion of religion and race that even some DUers are prone to. (To which somebody else in the Muslim Student's Association who was present said he most certainly wasn't Muslim, he was Shi'ite. Those Sa'udis.)
The guy's impression at the time was that those consciously left-of-center tended to insist he not be classified as white; moderates and conservatives trended mixed. This was the Southland, not the South, and it was years ago before the current hyperpolarization reached its present fevered pitch, so take "conservative" with a grain of salt if you're from much of the country. He was amused when, a few months later, he was hired and he had to check the racial classification box. His employer--a largish employer--said that he should check the "white" box.
We say race is socially constructed. We say society is diverse. Then we not only expect we demand to the point of presupposition that in this diverse social-construction there be single-minded answers to every question. Often because we assume that the only diversity that actually counts is racial, reinforcing and emphasizing distinctions to reinforce group boundaries even as we demand that some (but just those we don't like, given our particular philosophy) be eliminated. Sometimes because it's necessary for political goals to make this kind of simplistic assumption--nuance and complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity are inherently the evil of a lot of ideology.
Some pass for being white because they are white, it just surprises them when their perceptions, assumed to be universal, aren't everybody's. In some cases they "pass" not because the other person thinks they're white but because the other person really doesn't care. (And in cases when the person can't possibly think they're passing, confirmation bias tends to come up with some other opinion-protecting reason for the lack of discrimination, or discrimination is still identified according to a kind of modern quantum rule.)
My usual response when somebody says Latino =/= white is to point out that Xuxa was Latino. She wasn't indio nor Afro-Brazilian, to be sure (the hair/eye colors are her own).
I consciously avoid importing gender/case distinctions from other languages into English. I did not say that Putin's wife was Mrs. Putina (khotya by po-russki tak nazyvalas'), nor do I say that Obama met with Putinym. I only call Tatyana Tolstaya or Navratilova by their feminine-adjective surnames because they do; if either was unknown in the US I'd refer to one as Tatyana Tolstoy and the other as Navratilov. Having disposed of long-standing gender-based nouns (actor/actress), we're pretty much left with the adjectives blond(e) and brunet(te) and those are fading fast even among speakers of relatively standard English. Seems like a bad idea to dispose of one set of gendered adjectives on political/ideological grounds and then flip around and insist on them on the same political/ideological grounds.