I was wondering what RF's Racial or Ethnic make-up was and whether it affected discussions on various topics. How far does our Racial or Ethnic background determine our beliefs and experiences? And do you believe that certain racial or ethnic groups can necessarily be classified by collective experiences of domination or oppression in shaping the outlook of its individual members? Do you define your nationality or cultural identity by your racial group?
As this thread will inevitably involve defining what these categories are, to speed up the process here are some definitions from Wikipedia to get you all warmed up;
An ethnic group or an ethnicity, is a category of people who identify with each other based on similarities such as common ancestry, language, history, society, culture or nation. Ethnicity is usually an inherited status based on the society in which one lives. Membership of an ethnic group tends to be defined by a shared cultural heritage, ancestry, origin myth, history, homeland, language or dialect, symbolic systems such as religion, mythology and ritual, cuisine, dressing style, art or physical appearance.
A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century the term race began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits. Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, that is, a symbolic identity created to establish some cultural meaning. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.
I admittedly don't think about it that much, but I'm White-British/White-European. I think that I am "privileged" in a sense to have had the experience of living in a mainly white area and a society where white people control the levers of economic, political and cultural power. I realise that part of my identity is at least "inherited" from collective sources and draws on that historical blueprint of "White European civilisation" versus "everyone else". It's complicated by the fact I tend to resent ideas about "White Guilt" because I don't think Guilt can be a positive motivation for getting people to recognise and take responsibility for problems arising from race. I also tend to think attributing blame or responsibility to people based on the colour of their skin is counter-productive because we don't necessarily have the power to change everything and our character and responses to the situations that arise should matter in evaluating what role we play in a society based on racial inequalities. That being said, I do find it difficult talking about race and racism as a white guy, because of the danger of "lecturing" people who have experiences I don't share and may therefore reach legitimately different conclusions outside of the bubble of my own "white privilege".
How about you? Any thoughts or insights on the issue?
My ancestry is 50% Dutch from my father's side. That side of my family arrived in America in the early 19th century and remained mostly insulated in their own (Dutch-speaking) communities until my father's generation, when they started to become more "Americanized." They still continued to embrace their Dutch heritage, though. Both of my grandparents were born in America (as were their grandparents), but they grew up learning Dutch before they learned English.
On my mother's side, my grandmother was a typical white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (among the first English families to settle in what is now the state of Maryland in the 17th century), although she converted to Catholicism when she married my grandfather, a Catholic Cajun from Louisiana, whose family settled in that region sometime in the 18th century after the French and Indian War. (Prior to that, they were up in Canada, although records are a bit spotty.) My grandfather grew up learning French first before learning English, although he ran away from home early in life and tried hard to assimilate to the majority English-speaking culture which was all around him in other areas of the country.
My maternal grandmother was born in Missouri (which she pronounced as "Missoura"), although my grandparents met and married in California, where they both wound up at some point in the 1930s, which is where they remained for the rest of their lives. My grandmother was also a member of the DAR, and there were also people in that branch of my family who served in the Civil War - some Rebels and some Yankees.
As for the concepts or race, ethnicity, and privilege, America and the identity of "American" has always had kind of a strange history. In the Founders' time, "American" was more a geographical designation, since it referred to people who were mostly products of the British Isles, spoke the English language, and whose ethnic groups and cultures mostly mirrored that of Britain at the time, whether English, Scottish, Irish, or Welsh. Although there were also a fair number of Germans, Dutch, French, Swedish, and many other nationalities present, along with the Native American nationalities and the West Africans who were forcibly brought over as slaves (and whose cultures and languages were literally beaten out of them).
In later years, there also seemed to be a view regarding generational tenure, as in those whose ancestors arrived sooner and whose families were in America for generations - they saw themselves as more privileged and more entitled than the "new arrivals" who came after the Revolution or after the Civil War. I recall when people would look down on anyone whose surname ended in a vowel. It was similar with anyone who seemed to be "foreign" or "unassimilated" in any way. Henry Ford was a big proponent of assimilation, and set up schools for his immigrant workers in order to make them dress and act like Americans. A lot of immigrants in the late 19th/early 20th centuries felt compelled to change their surnames to make them more American sounding. (My Cajun grandfather changed his first name from "Pierre" to "William.")
