Oops
That last entry has comics and video installations. I always forget I'm not supposed to mix low and high art. Never understood why, but this is apparently very important to some people. Apologies.
In a press release, the American Sociological Association asks:
Would 'race' disappear if the United States officially stopped measuring it?WASHINGTON, DC -- What if the U.S. government stopped measuring race? Would the results be positive, negative, or indifferent? Under what conditions does the classification of people by race for the purpose of scientific inquiry promote racial division, and when does it aid in the achievement of justice and equality?
Some scholarly and civic leaders believe that the very idea of "race" has the effect of promoting social division and they have proposed that the government stop collecting these data altogether. Respected voices from the fields of human molecular biology and physical anthropology (supported by research from the Human Genome Project) assert that the concept of race has no validity in their respective fields. Growing numbers of humanist scholars, social anthropologists, and political commentators have joined the chorus in urging the nation to rid itself of the concept of race.
At its press conference today, the American Sociological Association (ASA), a scholarly organization of 13,000 academic and research sociologists, asserts in an official statement that it is imperative to support the continued collection and scholarly analysis of data on racial taxonomies.
[. . .] ASA also goes on record as opposing the elimination of data collection on race, because sociological studies show that this practice does not eliminate its use in daily life, both informally by individuals and formally within social and economic institutions. In France, information on race is seldom collected officially, but evidence of systematic racial discrimination remains. In Brazil, the nation's then-ruling military junta barred the collection of racial data in the 1970 census. The resulting information void, coupled with government censorship, diminished public discussion of racial issues but did not substantially reduce racial inequalities. Refusing to acknowledge the fact of racial classification, feelings, and actions, and refusing to measure them does not erase their consequences and will not allow research-based approach to the alleviation of race-induced social inequalities. At best, these actions will preserve the status quo and create an information vacuum.
(link courtesy of John C.)
One of the aforementioned "scholarly and civic leaders" is Steve Sailer, a proponent of the Racial Privacy Initiative (which I'd link to directly, but they've set links up to go boldface on a mouseover, causing it to jump to the next line in my browser. So it's no longer under the pointer, and I can't click it. Moving the pointer down to the link causes it to unbold and flip to the previous line. This is why my site design is so boring; to avoid effed-up shit like that.). Briefly,
The Racial Privacy Initiative would make it more difficult for the bureaucrats to carry on illegally discriminating by race in the name of affirmative action, since they couldn't demand that, say, University of California applicants check off race and ethnicity boxes.
As someone who was admitted to UC San Diego after Prop. 209 passed, all I have to say is, meh.
Think the folks in favor of not collecting data are headed in the same direction as Brazil. Discrimination will still take place, but it'll be harder to even try seeking court remedies because there'll be no data backing up accusations. And innocent until proven guilty still holds true in cases of little brown people charging discrimination, even if they can be detailed without trial indefinitely these days.
Charming.
Want to know more? Someone far more intelligent than I (which don't take much) suggested discussing Race, Class and Power in Brazil a while ago. It's so different from our effed-up color issues, though (assuming you grant that such exist), it's hard for me to wrap my brain around the issue. Priscilla (the utterly gorgeous woman from Brasil I had a linguistics class with a zillion years ago) was fair-skinned, blonde, green-eyed and partially black, after all. And she just could not understand the caste system here at all.
Comments
what do you think of the strategy suggested by the folks over at racetraitor.com, that people of mostly northern european descent refuse to check off "white" on census and other govt. forms, even checking off something else as a mild form of sabotage? do you think this type of wrenching hurts more than it helps? (but lying to THE MAN is so fun.....)
slightly OT, i feel inspired by the recent burning to the ground of the aryan nations compound in ohio to have a little celebratory barbecue with little model compound we could throw on the coals...
Posted by: fertile_jim | August 21, 2002 3:59 PM
I'd love to endorse race traitor. I really wish that I could but it's so focused on what white people can do to keep themselves from identifying as white that I'm not sure Noel and co. really do much of anything at all.
I have no doubts that those folks have only the best intentions but some of their strategies like encouraging people to adopt bits and pieces of other cultures as friggin' hobbies bugs the holy bejeesus out of me. It just seems so reductive and simplistic.
If we just stop using the word "white" and pretend white privilege doesn't have anything to do with us everything will be fine.
The intent is there it's just so, uh, lame.For the record I never put check the "white" box. I usually check either "Black" or "Latino" in hopes that inflation of numbers will somehow do something good or at least scare the pastier folks into moving back out to the suburbs.
Posted by: goneaway | August 21, 2002 4:31 PM
Darn. I hate when people ask questions about things I have to think about. Why do you think I normally quote the warbloggers? It allows for knee-jerk reactions.
Not sure about the Race Traitor 's'tragedy. On the one hand, subverting the system feels good. On the other, without accurate data, it's harder to make the sort of decisions which the gov't really shouldn't have to make in the first place.
Um, do the warbloggers hate them? In that case, they have my full and unqualified support. And if the tactic fails, 's'tragedy.
goneaway, be careful that your actions don't attract gentrifyin' yuppies to your neighborhood. Scum.
Posted by: Aaron | August 21, 2002 5:23 PM
I opt for a policy of checking all the "race" boxes whenever I think I can get away with it. I also like to check both "sex" boxes (regardless of whether or not I'm packing at the time), and usually under "occupation" enter either "panjandrum" or "fairy princess" or "wicked witch" (dependent upon mood). I think there are a lot of ways to call these distinctions and definitions into question, and, well, I'm easily amused.
Posted by: hanne | August 21, 2002 9:37 PM
Brief anecdote:
My dad, who's about as Republican as a person can get while still being a tolerable human being (I think he's secretly an old-school Federalist, but I haven't pinned it down yet), declined to state his race on his registration forms for graduate school -- Governor's State University, if I remember correctly. It just bothered him to be asked at all, and no, I don't know why.
Anyway, a few years later, he was talking with a professor and mentioned it for one reason or another. The reaction was, "Oh, you're the one?"
Apparently he was the only person incoming who'd declined to state in that year's incoming class.
What does that have to do with anything? I'm not sure. It seems like a good idea to share it at the moment. Generally, I check everything, however -- both gender boxes, all the races and ethnic groups. Mostly I just like making the little card-reading machines gak up in confusion.
Posted by: VASpider | August 21, 2002 10:19 PM
"I also like to check both "sex" boxes (regardless of whether or not I'm packing at the time)"
Now there's a coffee table book proposal for ya - Straight Girls Who Pack.
That would be something.
Posted by: Laura | August 21, 2002 10:28 PM
With lots of pictures, please. We bi chicks (even those of us who seldom pack, to tell the truth) would appreciate the eye candy.
Posted by: hanne | August 21, 2002 11:03 PM
For some reason, I can't imagine what a book called "Straight Girls Who Pack" would look like without pictures.
Send in the pictures, there ought to be pictures ...
Posted by: George | August 22, 2002 5:21 AM
Why do I have a feeling I'm going to have to turn off HTML in comments soon?
Posted by: Aaron | August 22, 2002 8:03 AM
*ahem* back to the discussion of race issues . . .*grin*
Worht sharing, perhaps: We had a series of guest lecturers in a phenomenal class on mondern Latin American history I took when I was an undergrad, and one of them was a specialist on race in Brazil. (Interestingly enough, she was a Japanese national.) Anyway, according to her the color hierarchy there is more a continuum than a compartmentalized system. But the anti-melatonin bias remains powerful. Families will purposefully educate their lighter-skinned children better than the darker-skinned ones, assuming the effort wasted on their darker children. And startling attitudes surround sex and skin tone. She quoted a proverb about women apparently still used in Brazil: "White Women for Marriage; Black Women for Work; Mulattas for Sex." (Please pardon the obectionable terminology; it was her translation, and the horridness of the whole thing struck me at the time and stuck with me.)
So, according to this researcher, anyway, Brazilian culture doesn't work according to if/then operators (IF anyone in your family tree was dark-skinned, THEN you are discriminated against as fully as possible) but they still have strong biases towards whiteness.
I wonder: is it any less fucked up? Or just differently fucked up?
Posted by: garrity | August 22, 2002 9:30 AM
Ah, the miracle of Stalinist revisionism. . .
Garrity, think I'd heard that proverb before, unfortunately.
Thanks to the lack of hard data (what a coincidence), can't really measure the level of fucked-upness. There does seem to be more intermarriage, or at least more sex, resulting in a race of drop-dead gorgeous people, so let's say different and slightly less.
Posted by: Aaron | August 22, 2002 11:55 AM
re: the race of drop-dead gorgeous people -- amen to that, aaron. I almost swerved into a parked car today because I couldn't take my eyes off of a member of that aforementioned race. One of those 0-to-60 in .3 seconds libido things... so fine it made my teeth hurt.
Posted by: hanne | August 22, 2002 6:23 PM
Ah, someone who understands.
Worst thing about Priscilla was, she was only taking a few classes at the U because her mom was a visiting professor. The child was like 17. And cheerfully oblivious to the reactions she caused. Maybe she thought Americans normally rode bikes into trees and walked into walls.
In the new regime, burkhas will be required for underage Brazillian hotties. It seems misogynist and cruel, but really it's for their safety and that of others.
Posted by: Aaron | August 23, 2002 7:12 AM