Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Self-Defined Majorities -- When does "white" mean white? And who decides?

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Jun 26, 2023, at 1:56 PM, Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> Here is a useful article on defining whiteness
> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/im-jewish-and-dont-identify-as-white-why-must-i-check-that-box.html

This is an excellent article — it’s a response by Kwame Anthony Appiah to a 
woman who doesn’t like ticking the box for white because she is Jewish and does 
not consider herself white. Many Jewish people identify as Asian or 
Mediterranean and thus closer to brown than to white, whatever white is. 

The responding author argues that whiteness is more than skin color and is not 
ours to individually redefine:

> It’s not only our language but all our social practices that we build in 
> common. ... If you don’t want to be white because you repudiate white 
> supremacy or the racialization of public life, you first have to work 
> alongside others to unmake an unjust social order.

The problem with this argument in the context of checking boxes is that it 
supports the illusion of a white majority — it says you have to go along with 
this until we have something else. I don’t think that is how we get something 
else. Nothing happens without protest.

Yes, everyone should work alongside each other to change unjust social orders. 
But injustice is not confined to whiteness and blackness. Social stigmas are 
also there between Black and Native Americans and many other groups. Black 
Americans from Guiana and South Chicago. We don’t need to know whether a child 
is black or white to know if they are being treated unfairly. Or if they need a 
free breakfast.

Appiah also points out that:

> Here’s one kind of privilege that white people have in our society: When you 
> point to acts of anti-Black racism, you’re less likely than a Black person to 
> be suspected of being hypersensitive or self-interested. You can also speak 
> up in all-white settings when people venture anti-Black remarks. In the 
> struggle against racism, it sometimes helps if you don’t have skin in the 
> game.

This is true and a good point to remember as a white person, but it doesn’t 
require accepting that “white” is anything but an illusion and including 
oneself in that self-defined majority. A white person can speak up and will be 
heard as a white person which confers privilege in some situations without 
having to tick off a box saying I am white.

> Here is a useful article on why we no longer use caucasian
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race
> (It was used in original racial classifications based on the theory
> that Noah's ark landed in the Cuacasus mountains!)

I’ve never heard this reasoning before. From a recent acquaintance with Turkey 
as a biblical site, however, it makes some sense since in the 17th and 18th 
centuries the people printing the Christian Bible believed everyone who could 
write was white, in particular, everyone in the Bible.

The first time I had to tick a box I also had to look up all the labels because 
there was no option for "non-Indian from Oklahoma.” My source said Caucasian 
meant the people who originated in the area around the Caucasus Mountains. That 
seemed odd since the Caucasus is on the southern edge of Russia. In the 1950s, 
Russians were enemies and not very nice people so why was I Caucasian? But when 
it is for school, you do what is expected, no questions asked.

Also from Appiah:

> Like Jacob and Esau, the racial designations “white” and “Black” were born 
> twins. In this country, since the colonial era, they have functioned to turn 
> human beings from a wide range of societies on two continents into two vast 
> assemblages.

All the racial designations seem to be related to English Colonialism and thus 
based on the English as the superior race. Every country they colonized was 
“not English” so it became "not white." Everywhere the English went they 
created hierarchies based on the skin color of the Royal Family. Their 
distinctions were totally arbitrary and had only one purpose: to designate a 
superior culture—the one in charge— so they had to create hierarchies where 
there were none in order to have sanctioned layers of control and domination. 

In this process, they also created “white.” I only recently realized that the 
people of India were considered black. In all the areas I have lived, they were 
considered different only if they dressed differently and practiced a different 
religion. I had never heard them called black. (Understanding this, however, 
made it much easier to understand the British love stories set in India where a 
great fuss is created over this person or that person being inappropriate.)

> In terms "what value in the boxes" every research you have read that
> describes black maternal death rates as higher than whites, total
> wealth of blacks, latinx, asian american, unemployment figures, etc.
> is based on checking that box.

The problem is that this is wildly unscientific. Can we correct injustices 
based on data that is not measurable? There is no measurable definition of 
white or black, or brown. Some people have identified themselves with a social 
group — White Supremacist, Black Power, or Person of Color, but then it takes 
on a deeper meaning than the one the Census or the hospitals use.

DC is an interesting place to live in this respect. In the news media here, 
everything is defined as Black or White —usually just Black because “everything 
else” is assumed to be white so it doesn’t need to be identified. The 
governance of DC is Black on the local level but is routinely overridden by the 
white majority in Congress because we are like a protectorate of the Federal 
Government, not a state. There are huge cultural differences in the Black 
community because so many are connected to their country's embassies and have 
no history of enslavement. A black friend said, “It is hard to be with so many 
people who look like me but are not like me. They don’t sound like me or think 
like me.” She spoke British English. 

> To choose not to check the box is to decide it is better not to know
> what inequalities exist in our culture.

The boxes were theoretically put there for that purpose—to measure injustice. 
But do the agencies decide themselves which groups people belong to? And is 
that as meaningful as we think it is even if they are “right”? 

The unintended consequences have contributed to the black/white division for 
sure — it eliminates the sliding scale. The vocabulary distinguishing between 
various black/white mixtures is obsolete. People are required to be black or 
white. And we know we should check the box that everyone else thinks we should 
check. Your classroom teacher will change it if you don’t.

Eastern medicine has always recognized that the same illnesses are caused by 
different things and have different outcomes depending on the body type, etc., 
of the patient. Their measurements seem mystical to Westerners, but they are 
based on measurable data and the West is beginning to take notice. With DNA we 
are also beginning to see illnesses that have different results in people who 
have DNA markers common in Africa or in Scandinavia. This will save lives. It 
is also measurable. Racial classifications are not measurable and not 
predictable. They are context dependent.

The list of racial classifications on government documents also grows longer 
each year. I think there is meaning in that. I think it means something that 
Black has expanded to Black or African American but White remains White. From 
the University of Wisconsin:

> The definition of “White” used in the 2010 U.S. Census refers to a person 
> having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, 
> most Spanish speaking countries (South or Central America, or North Africa. 
> The White racial category includes people who marked the “White” checkbox and 
> also includes respondents who reported entries such as Caucasian or White; 
> European entries, such as Irish, German, and Polish; Middle Eastern entries, 
> such as Arab, Lebanese, and Palestinian; and North African entries, such as 
> Algerian, Moroccan, and Egyptian.

https://blogs.extension.wisc.edu/oaic/2017/11/09/is-there-a-difference-between-white-and-caucasian/#:~:text=The%20bottom%20line%3F,a%20geographical%20and%20American%20ancestry.

Those are very broad geographic areas. It would provide more meaningful data if 
people did use European American, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean American, or 
Spanish American. Irish American, Italian American, Spanish American convey 
even more. When I think back on the communities of the large cities I’ve lived 
in including Kansas City, Chicago, New York, and DC, the distinctions between 
geo-cultural areas are more meaningful in terms of socio-ethnic groupings than 
either white or Black. 

My fundamental question is why do we classify ourselves in cohousing as White 
and then decry our lack of diversity? Is White a reality? What is it? Is it any 
more a fact than "college-graduate” or people who drive Priuses? Maybe we 
should focus on recruiting some other demographic.

My argument is that we hold on to white because it preserves the illusion of a 
majority. And of "alikeness.” But if we identified ourselves as Irish American, 
Hungarian American, Italian American, German American, etc., we might be more 
accepting of Nigerian Americans, Jamaican Americans, Asian Americans, etc. We 
would all be understood as members of distinct groups instead of pretending we 
are melted and basing social action on undefinable data.

I’m determined to find the bottom of the portentous word “White."

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Pass the Olives
https://passtheolives.substack.com/p/self-defined-majorities