The conversation in class yesterday got me thinking. Someone mentioned that whites are now more likely to introduce or identify themselves as a hyphenated American (German-American or Italian-American) than they are to just say that they are white. Then another student mentioned that this might be true within a certain context. White people might be more inclined to specify their nationality or heritage to another white person than they would to a “person of color”, for lack of a better term. One there is that this could be a form of status. In racial relations, white always trumps black. But amongst white people, it could be necessary to differentiate what type of “white” one is: Eastern European vs. Western European, etc.
Or, whites hyphenating themselves could be becoming increasingly popular, especially in liberal communities. I have heard white Americans in New York and other big cities identify as simply Jewish, half-Italian, etc.. But whenever I go to visit my family in Alabama there is just one type of white, and that’s white. In fact, no one has to identify as white, because they identify as Americans, and to them, American is synonymous with white. Being a hyphenated American, in many parts of the country, is still not being a true American.
In a book I read for another class called White Out by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, he talks about the general conception that race is becoming increasingly less important in the United States. Because America is becoming such a melting pot of different races and multiracial people, many believe multiculturalism will win out over racism. The reality is, as we have seen through out history, that race will not disappear, it will evolve. People who could not be considered “white” fifty and even twenty years ago are considered white today–but this didn’t eliminate discrimination or racism. Categories change on the Census (non-Hispanic white & non-Hispanic black) , and terms have become more socially acceptable while others not (colored people, African-American, black, people of color).
Finally, there is a difference between race, ethnicity, and nationality that the terms “black” and “white” do not allow. These terms become problematic because someone can be white and Jewish, black and Cuban, and of course, somewhere in between.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: black, class, Language, race, White
I definitely agree with what you are saying about how race must evolve because it cannot be taken out of the equation. The main problem as I see it is the rigidity with which people are racialized. Race is a social category put upon people, rather than something that is primordial and unchanging. Right now in my Rwanda genocide class at Mount Holyoke I can see from my research the devastating effect of seeing ethnic differences in stark relief (exacerbated by colonialism) and not granting them the same kind of realistic idea that there is fluidity and mixing and that race isn’t unchanging.
Problems can be found in everything. Charlize Theron and Dave Matthews are white and from Africa, so were the Indians in Uganda. And plenty black people who are misrecognized as African-American. I don’t know how to fix the problem, but hyphens aren’t necessarily the way. Race and nationality aren’t the same thing. I think that’s part of it.