Nice article! Beyond the nuances you detail, it made me think: aren't we all an -ish? I mean yes, some of us have a more defined race, I am white, for example. But if we look back in our history, we all are an -ish or another. And that's the beauty of the in-between.
Yes, in the book world, race is very much a marketing category, more so than at any point in the past. And since it's a marketing category, there are writers who play the market. There are writers who claim to be Native American but who are demonstrably not. Some don't have any Native American ancestors at all and some have that one 19th Century ancestor. There is a filmmaker in Canada who claims to be Native because of one 18th Century Native ancestor. Not so long ago, a person with Native and non-Native heritage would refer to themselves as mixed-blood. That was the popular term. But now many of those same people, and people like them, identify as only Native even when they didn't grow up with a tribal identity. Using your term, they could be called Native-ish. In our world, we have various insulting names for them—"eyedropper Indian" being one of them. The most overlooked problem in this, though, is the non-acknowledgment of the privileges of economic class. You'll find that a majority, a super-majority, of writers who identify as Native grew up in privileged situations.
I don't really mean "ish" as an identity fraction, whether half or 1/18. You can never get away from arguments about what portion makes you authentic enough. Plus, you'll always have ethnic imposture. I mean it as the practice of resistance to categories not because they are bad or wrong (they're inevitable) but because it prevents the categories from governing us.
Yes, and I think the pretend Indians and barely Indians, who are invariably of the political left, end up narrowing the public perception of what Indian is. I'm of the politicsl left but my Native family and friends span the political spectrum.
I’ve often thought that the commonality of class was at least as powerful as the commonality of race. Perhaps because class markers are somewhat more objective?
Class is the great divider. I think class markers are highly subjective, which is just reason why class makes everyone so nervous. In higher ed, for example, no one knows what to do with your spouse or partner if they are working class. But mixed race partners and cross-cultural partners have cache -- so long as everyone has the same level of education.
"...the same level of education..." Yes, that's a good point. I make the joke that the book world has grown more diverse ethnically but everybody still has an MFA from Iowa.
Powerful words. I remember during my 30 day trip all over China back in ‘98 that we visited one small village on the banks of the Yangtze that was soon to be buried by the new reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam. The kids wanted nothing more than to touch my bald white head. And my Jolly Ranchers I’d brought along ☺️
Curiosity is not racism either. We all need to grow our understanding, and today’s anti racism opportunists like Henry Rogers don’t help...they hurt IMHO.
I've read "How To Be An Anti-Racist" and I had no problem with it. I think he believes genuinely and passionately in his cause. But he seems resistant to dialogue about his position, perhaps because he is always put on the defensive.
But this presumes that Kendi is making a good faith argument that can be respectfully challenged. If his message has become a brand, its rigidity does not owe to opposition so much as market imperatives. I think it’s an instructive case of how market rewards narrow, rather than expand, the conversation about race.
I don't disagree. Kendi's message has become a brand because his work was subjected to market forces that I think most of us just have never and will never experience. Did he make choices he shouldn't have regarding his message? probably. But no matter what the message became, the original book seems passionate and well-intentioned, if a bit absolutist.
"Branding is not voice. It may give voice, but the social price it exacts may no longer be worth it." This is true of universities, as I've often said, but branding is an even more pernicious part of the public conversation about race. It creates disincentives for exploring the "in-between" spaces, as you suggest, because the consequences for doing so might not be terribly different from a Republican choosing to work with Democrats.
The current controversy surrounding Ibram X. Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research is perhaps instructive. As Pamela Paul writes, Kendi's "strident, simplistic formula" was fantastic for branding, but disastrous in practice. Paul concludes, "...[T]he best that could come out of this particular reckoning would be a more nuanced and open-minded conversation around racism and a commitment to more diverse visions of how to address it."
Thanks for inviting exactly that kind of conversation, Carol.
Yes, I saw that article about Kendi. It suggests he needs to make some changes. But I did get the idea from the article that his failure was more about leadership of an institution (too busy, not around enough, not a good people person) than about his cause. His vision is too absolute for my taste, but I respect the justified sense of urgency from which it arose. I believe he can adapt and has much good still to offer the world. And I think we would all benefit if he could remain in conversation with his detractors, tough as that might be, because the kind of conversation that would demand would help illuminate some of the nuances most conversations on race simply lack.
I would like to title this: "We Are One" --if only we could imagine a world that understands that fact. Congrats on the Georgia University Press Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. For two consecutive years I helped judge the contest with Lee K. Abbott and know how hard it is to win this award.
Wow, Mary, I wasn't aware you had worked on the Flannery. Do you know Lori Ostlund? She's terrific. And, yes, the award is a profound honor to me.
You know, I agree that "we are one," but I'm no universalist. I didn't mention the work of Thomas Chatterton Williams (Self Portrait in Black and White) which I take strong issue with because his solution to the work wars is an elevated sense of humanist individualism along the lines of Mark Lila. I believe in identity distinctions and in the collective political voice only identity can provide. My graduate work wouldn't have been possible without it. Unfortunately, Capitalism lures us into absolutism (this may have happened to Kendi) because it is intoxicating to find success and one does have to earn a living. And race is not immune to that lure.
Beautiful. I think I mentioned to you once before, for me one of the disorienting things about moving to the midwest is that here, I am always read as "white," whereas back home in South Florida, people don't assume -- I could be anything. That lack of assumption is incredibly freeing. As it happens I am white, or white enough: I'm descended from Yiddish-speaking Odessan Jews who were desperate to un-Jewify themselves and took extraordinary pains to clorox their way into the white american fabric -- including abandoning their daughters to be raised by catholic nuns. They came and visited and were proud of the girls' accomplishments -- but they didn't want to stain them or impede their fortunes with their obvious "ethnicity." When I lived in England in my early 20s I had a similar revelation to Simeon's -- at first I delighted in the *seeming* racial harmony, until I began to understand the *tone* in which certain words were said: "Asian" was code for "Pakistani" which was otherwise often shortened to "Paki" and these words were not meant with any level of acceptance or affection. And of course Simeon's observation is still true in France to this day. Everyone wants an underclass, it seems. In Kwame Anthony Appiah's book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity he tells a fascinating story about a put-upon minority in medieval France who had by today's standards no "mark of difference" and yet were ruthlessly discriminated against and ultimately wiped out. I absolutely adore that book, btw, and recommend it to everyone. How people read us and how we read ourselves is endlessly complex and mysterious, both materially meaningless and socially consequential. Being human is so bizarre.
More world travel like yours is one answer, isn't it?! (I'll be you have great stories. Well, I know you do.)
Absolutely agree: everyone wants an underclass. One day, it won't be race that divides us -- because we will all be brown! But we will still find a way to create hierarchies. That difference-making function is what needs our focus most of all. I think that's what Dr. Seuss's Sneetches story was about. (And we know what happened to him).
Nice article! Beyond the nuances you detail, it made me think: aren't we all an -ish? I mean yes, some of us have a more defined race, I am white, for example. But if we look back in our history, we all are an -ish or another. And that's the beauty of the in-between.
Yes, in the book world, race is very much a marketing category, more so than at any point in the past. And since it's a marketing category, there are writers who play the market. There are writers who claim to be Native American but who are demonstrably not. Some don't have any Native American ancestors at all and some have that one 19th Century ancestor. There is a filmmaker in Canada who claims to be Native because of one 18th Century Native ancestor. Not so long ago, a person with Native and non-Native heritage would refer to themselves as mixed-blood. That was the popular term. But now many of those same people, and people like them, identify as only Native even when they didn't grow up with a tribal identity. Using your term, they could be called Native-ish. In our world, we have various insulting names for them—"eyedropper Indian" being one of them. The most overlooked problem in this, though, is the non-acknowledgment of the privileges of economic class. You'll find that a majority, a super-majority, of writers who identify as Native grew up in privileged situations.
I don't really mean "ish" as an identity fraction, whether half or 1/18. You can never get away from arguments about what portion makes you authentic enough. Plus, you'll always have ethnic imposture. I mean it as the practice of resistance to categories not because they are bad or wrong (they're inevitable) but because it prevents the categories from governing us.
Yes, and I think the pretend Indians and barely Indians, who are invariably of the political left, end up narrowing the public perception of what Indian is. I'm of the politicsl left but my Native family and friends span the political spectrum.
I’ve often thought that the commonality of class was at least as powerful as the commonality of race. Perhaps because class markers are somewhat more objective?
Class is the great divider. I think class markers are highly subjective, which is just reason why class makes everyone so nervous. In higher ed, for example, no one knows what to do with your spouse or partner if they are working class. But mixed race partners and cross-cultural partners have cache -- so long as everyone has the same level of education.
"...the same level of education..." Yes, that's a good point. I make the joke that the book world has grown more diverse ethnically but everybody still has an MFA from Iowa.
Powerful words. I remember during my 30 day trip all over China back in ‘98 that we visited one small village on the banks of the Yangtze that was soon to be buried by the new reservoir created by the Three Gorges Dam. The kids wanted nothing more than to touch my bald white head. And my Jolly Ranchers I’d brought along ☺️
Curiosity is not racism either. We all need to grow our understanding, and today’s anti racism opportunists like Henry Rogers don’t help...they hurt IMHO.
I've read "How To Be An Anti-Racist" and I had no problem with it. I think he believes genuinely and passionately in his cause. But he seems resistant to dialogue about his position, perhaps because he is always put on the defensive.
But this presumes that Kendi is making a good faith argument that can be respectfully challenged. If his message has become a brand, its rigidity does not owe to opposition so much as market imperatives. I think it’s an instructive case of how market rewards narrow, rather than expand, the conversation about race.
I don't disagree. Kendi's message has become a brand because his work was subjected to market forces that I think most of us just have never and will never experience. Did he make choices he shouldn't have regarding his message? probably. But no matter what the message became, the original book seems passionate and well-intentioned, if a bit absolutist.
Fair enough. I respect your opinion although I disagree.
"Branding is not voice. It may give voice, but the social price it exacts may no longer be worth it." This is true of universities, as I've often said, but branding is an even more pernicious part of the public conversation about race. It creates disincentives for exploring the "in-between" spaces, as you suggest, because the consequences for doing so might not be terribly different from a Republican choosing to work with Democrats.
The current controversy surrounding Ibram X. Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research is perhaps instructive. As Pamela Paul writes, Kendi's "strident, simplistic formula" was fantastic for branding, but disastrous in practice. Paul concludes, "...[T]he best that could come out of this particular reckoning would be a more nuanced and open-minded conversation around racism and a commitment to more diverse visions of how to address it."
Thanks for inviting exactly that kind of conversation, Carol.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/05/opinion/ibram-x-kendi-racism.html
Yes, I saw that article about Kendi. It suggests he needs to make some changes. But I did get the idea from the article that his failure was more about leadership of an institution (too busy, not around enough, not a good people person) than about his cause. His vision is too absolute for my taste, but I respect the justified sense of urgency from which it arose. I believe he can adapt and has much good still to offer the world. And I think we would all benefit if he could remain in conversation with his detractors, tough as that might be, because the kind of conversation that would demand would help illuminate some of the nuances most conversations on race simply lack.
I would like to title this: "We Are One" --if only we could imagine a world that understands that fact. Congrats on the Georgia University Press Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. For two consecutive years I helped judge the contest with Lee K. Abbott and know how hard it is to win this award.
Wow, Mary, I wasn't aware you had worked on the Flannery. Do you know Lori Ostlund? She's terrific. And, yes, the award is a profound honor to me.
You know, I agree that "we are one," but I'm no universalist. I didn't mention the work of Thomas Chatterton Williams (Self Portrait in Black and White) which I take strong issue with because his solution to the work wars is an elevated sense of humanist individualism along the lines of Mark Lila. I believe in identity distinctions and in the collective political voice only identity can provide. My graduate work wouldn't have been possible without it. Unfortunately, Capitalism lures us into absolutism (this may have happened to Kendi) because it is intoxicating to find success and one does have to earn a living. And race is not immune to that lure.
Beautiful. I think I mentioned to you once before, for me one of the disorienting things about moving to the midwest is that here, I am always read as "white," whereas back home in South Florida, people don't assume -- I could be anything. That lack of assumption is incredibly freeing. As it happens I am white, or white enough: I'm descended from Yiddish-speaking Odessan Jews who were desperate to un-Jewify themselves and took extraordinary pains to clorox their way into the white american fabric -- including abandoning their daughters to be raised by catholic nuns. They came and visited and were proud of the girls' accomplishments -- but they didn't want to stain them or impede their fortunes with their obvious "ethnicity." When I lived in England in my early 20s I had a similar revelation to Simeon's -- at first I delighted in the *seeming* racial harmony, until I began to understand the *tone* in which certain words were said: "Asian" was code for "Pakistani" which was otherwise often shortened to "Paki" and these words were not meant with any level of acceptance or affection. And of course Simeon's observation is still true in France to this day. Everyone wants an underclass, it seems. In Kwame Anthony Appiah's book The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity he tells a fascinating story about a put-upon minority in medieval France who had by today's standards no "mark of difference" and yet were ruthlessly discriminated against and ultimately wiped out. I absolutely adore that book, btw, and recommend it to everyone. How people read us and how we read ourselves is endlessly complex and mysterious, both materially meaningless and socially consequential. Being human is so bizarre.
More world travel like yours is one answer, isn't it?! (I'll be you have great stories. Well, I know you do.)
Absolutely agree: everyone wants an underclass. One day, it won't be race that divides us -- because we will all be brown! But we will still find a way to create hierarchies. That difference-making function is what needs our focus most of all. I think that's what Dr. Seuss's Sneetches story was about. (And we know what happened to him).