The Tangle of Privilege

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I’ve written before on the state of racism in America saying that of course it exists – it will exist so long as America is populated by human beings – but it’s not racism as defined by law (or news, or entertainment) nor even some kind of thing that can be identified and mitigated by law and/or social processes.  It is also, at any level it can be defined, less than in practically any other country.  (At least any country I’ve lived in/visited/have friends from – which covers most of the world.)

“Racism” in the sense of “he who doesn’t look like us will be kept out/killed/denied” is part of the makeup of the human brain.  It just is.  It is part of the brains of our fellow great apes, too.  And most other mammals.

Experiments have been made with not only getting a mother (of whatever species) to accept offspring of another species, but also with changing one of her own cubs – scent or look – to see if it’s still recognized.  Most of these experiments end with the death of the cub.

It’s actually easier to take a cub of another species, rub the other cub’s scent on it and get the mother to adopt it (this produces some completely insane squirrels-raised-by-cats.  Look it up if you have an hour to spare) than to remove the identifying characteristics and get the mother’s own cub to be accepted.

It is of course a necessary mechanism.  Well, think about it.  Posit gradual enough evolution from our pre-human ancestors that the mothers didn’t kill the babies.  It still needs to be that our ancestors preferred each other (possibly their siblings) for a good long time, or speciation would never have happened.  And given our species proven ability to screw anything that moves, what is amazing is that we DID speciate.  The preference was marked enough for us to leave the old species behind.

The preference, of course, must have been for “more like us than not in a pinch” too, considering the humanoid species they keep finding in our ancestry.  (Actually my theory on the extinction of all these other human species is not one of the popular ones, like “we killed them” or “we ate them” [though doubtless there were instances of both.  There are instances of both within our own species and not that long ago.]  I think we genetically overwhelmed them.  I think for whatever reason we were more fertile [perhaps the having lost estrus or season] an idea immortalized in our legends, of other human species with trouble reproducing, and we just had more kiddies than they did, intermarried, had kids who looked more like us, and they sort of disappeared.  Only they’re still there in our  genetics.)  And of course at times and in certain places things like mountain ranges might have intervened to isolate our ancestors from the parent species.

But given how many human species emerged it can’t ALL have been great floods and sudden mountain range (!).  It MUST have been preference for “we like those like us more than those others.”

That seems to remain, by and large.  People pick companions who are more like them than not.  How many of us prefer to associate with other Odds on line, (even when we fight) than to hang out with our perfectly normal (and often polite) neighbors?

And that’s where the law and social correctives go wrong.  Because “racism” is both much “finer” than just skin-color, slicing a dozen different ways, and far less defined.  First, who do you think my kids have more in common with?  A geeky, black science fiction fan, or a white kid who was raised on a steady diet of TV and reality shows?  In that context “skin color” is the last thing on their minds and it counts for absolutely nothing.  (And btw, both of them of in circumstances where those were their choices not only formed lasting friendships with kids of other “races” but – and this is important – completely failed to see the race, to the extent of giving me descriptions of how to find this kid in a crowd to give them a message which included “He’s tall, and he’s wearing a red jacket.  I think his backpack is blue” but COMPLETELY ignored “this is one of the five black kids in the school.”  (No, it was not self-consciousness.  Not in family.  They just honestly completely forgot that part.  When I said “Oh, for the love of Bob, why didn’t you…” the answer was “Oh.  Duh.  I didn’t remember.”  — interestingly my husband pulled a similar one on me with someone who worked for him.  I was expecting a tall blond guy, because of his name.  Never mind.)

Second, the “racist” – let’s call it “exclusionary” impulse just means “if you stick out, we’ll exclude you.”  It could be you’re the only red head in a room full of brunettes.  But actually at least in America your exterior characteristics are likely to matter for far less than your internal characteristics or your behavior.  You’re far more likely to be shunned if you’re the guy who comes in for a baseball game wearing a tuxedo or who wears a t-shirt to a formal (though these days people will try to pretend they’re not shunning you in the latter case because you’re being “natural” and “unstudied” and those are supposed to be god things.  Never mind.  Talk for another time.)

In fairly uniform countries, if you stick out, you get it.  I’m not sure how much of my sense of discomfort in Portugal came from the fact I was 5’7” when I finished growing (I’m now 5’5” due mostly to issues during first pregnancy.  Long story) and that my hair was that shade of very dark red that lit up as flame in the sun, (now I’ll figure out what color it is if Clairol factories are ever shut down by government order.  I think it’s mostly white and has been since my twenties) but looked brown-black indoors.  People routinely assumed I was a tourist and addressed me in other languages, and though I was (till aforementioned first pregnancy and six months bed rest from which my figure never recovered) a size seven, I grew up with nicknames like “whale” and “mastodon”

Now, if you look at my school pictures, you’d think I look exactly (well, close enough that in the US it would be considered “family resemblance”) like my classmates, only in a bigger scale.  But to them I was definitely “weird” and “strange” enough in appearance for it to matter.  (My husband about choked when someone referred to me in public over there as “blondie” – I had to explain to him that “blond” is anything short of very dark brown or black.)

Does this account for my growing up weird?  Maybe.  I’ve looked at my ancestors, even the ones who presented physically normal and I’m not convinced.  A strong streak of “You may go to h*ll, I’m going Odd” seems to run through.  OTOH it certainly worked to convince me that I could never fit in, so why try?

This too is a form of racism that can neither be identified nor ameliorated by law.  I mean, okay, I can see our bureaucracy TRY “If someone is more than two inches above median and more than two shades lighter/darker than the group, he or she must…”  I can see them try because these are people who try to regulate how much salt you can eat.  I can also see them try because if we let them they would have paperclip inspectors, making sure the paperclips on every desk were properly stored.  Let’s face it – they don’t trust us to cross the street alone.

On the other hand it CAN’T be done.

And I’m not even going to say that there was never a racism problem in America – of course there is/was/would be.  “Racism” defined as the exclusionary impulse responds to “Shared background” as much as to “sufficiently big external characteristic” and when groups had been kept legally separate (first by slavery, then by legal separation laws) they wouldn’t have much in common and also the appearance would be a novelty.

So I can totally see where the government thought it had a reason to step in.  (Usually same reason as always – having caused the problem, they now claimed they had to step in to solve it.)  The problem was their assuming the problem would persist forever and ever and that they had to step in forever, because left to their own devices, people would care more about ONE characteristic – skin color – than about shared background or interests, or even proximity.

This is puzzling because at the same time they are creating quasi-racial groups out of cultures.  I don’t know who it was who said that if Irish and Italians had been treated as we’re treating those of Latin origin, not only would they never have assimilated but their criminality and other dysfunction would be through the roof.  They were, nonetheless, right.

I say this as someone who grew up thinking of herself as white (with whatever fell in the pot along the way) and who, upon entering this country found out she was “Latina” which some people seem to think is a separate race. (Or just confuse race with culture.  To the extent that Europeans used to talk of the French race or the Spanish Race, this has been going on a long time.)

Even before I was officially “Latina”, due to the fact that most people think that Portugal is somewhere in South America, I found myself being treated weirdly.  Complete strangers told me I’d come here to avoid starving (!  Mom would have been offended.  There were four in the family.  She always cooked for fifteen.  Honestly if I hadn’t made untoward efforts to slim, I’d have been 300 lbs by 12.)  Other complete strangers told me I came here so I could be liberated and not have to obey men in everything (I’d have liked to introduce these darlings to mom or grandma.)  Others told me my culture was of course more emotive/fun/colorful/just/interesting/diverse (!) in touch with nature (!!!!!) or rich (?????) than American culture.

I have said before that my first publishing house thought the interesting bit about me was not that I could write stories, but that I was born in Portugal and was “Latina” – hence the exhortation (yes, I spell extortion funny) to write my biography when I was less than forty (that it was assumed I was oppressed goes without saying, right?)

And that’s what you have to look at to figure out “white privilege” to the extent it exists.  If someone else named Sarah Hoyt (who didn’t go to cons, and get asked about how she got to have such a name/accent or) someone who grew up here, and possibly was born here, wrote science fiction, what would you care about?  How good the science fiction was, right?  Actually for this lot, that’s what you care about anyway.

BUT not to people who took the “we must always be inclusive” and “culture is race” thing to heart.  To them the most important thing about me is ALWAYS that I was born abroad/have an accent (yes, I know, but when I came through you HAD to go to cons.  It’s when I made most of my sales for anthologies, and some books, for the upcoming year.  Certainly where I made most of my “for hire” sales.)

It took me flat nothing to realize that because I was female, had a degree in literature, spoke with an accent and came from a Latin country not only were certain political and social views EXPECTED from me but I was supposed to have been oppressed…  And those expectations WERE oppression.  If I tried to be just myself, I’d get smacked in line or treated like that bird who leaves the flock.

Which brings us to the irony of white privilege in the US today.  The misnamed “White Privilege” which could simply be called “Normal Privilege” for whatever is normal for that area, is the ability to not have expectations and ideas pushed on you.  (The reason I say this is “normal privilege” is that you can be lily white, but if you’re a Southerner in NYC, you too will find that they’re trying very hard to put you in a specific box.)

No one who hasn’t experienced the attempt to make you be what other people THINK you are, can know how bothersome it is.  Of course the only people who’ve never experienced this are people in the least diverse (and culled to be that way) environment in the world: people who run in North Eastern intellectual circles.  The rest of you have probably at least experienced this briefly.

In the end you’re left with either living up (down) to the stereotype because it’s less trouble than fighting it and/or going completely against it, and having people resent it.  It takes a lot more effort, if you’ve been classed as a stereotyped category to be yourself, than it does if you’re not put in a category to begin with.

And again that’s the ironical part. The government’s definition of “protected race/culture” fixating on certain (largely irrelevant) characteristics and the armies of political correctness (like the armies of darkness, but more evil) led by the mass entertainment have created both classes of people who feel aggrieved and set aside (without realizing what aggrieves them and sets them aside is large the weird expression to being afraid of offending them or setting them aside) and an untold, never before found privilege: the ability to move through life with a minimum of stereotypes attached.

I sometimes envy those people greatly.  But then I realize that NO ONE is ever free of expectations.  (Most people just don’t have the honor of having them governmentally pre-defined.)  My small, youthful-looking husband, for instance, is not expected to have vast knowledge and experience in his field.

But I do resent the government’s attempt to solve a problem that no longer exists in the shape they think it does creating a bigger and odder problem.  I just hope they don’t try to solve this one too.  We all know how that would end up.

268 thoughts on “The Tangle of Privilege”

      1. I grew up thinking that no matter how functional and effective my ancestors are or were, that it wouldn’t do me any good if I were not competent enough to live.

        As a child, I started to get an idea of how much I didn’t know. I saw that if I stayed in that state, I would be unable to keep myself alive. Much of what followed were efforts to increase my ability for that purpose.

        Except maybe for boot on the throat of the economy issues, all of my real problems, all of my significant challenges are with my own self. Neither my ethnic background nor my gender can really help me much with that. Maybe you could say something about religion, philosophy, or ideology. However, if so, it was the internal, not the political aspects.

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        1. Why am I thinking of the line near the beginning of Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon about the mathematician being a lean mean badass born of a line of proven badasses?

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          1. Because badass can be due to habits, mental and other wise, and can thus be passed down by way of early childhood education and mimicry. Along with other relevant teachings.

            Extremely valuable learned tendencies can be passed down in families this way.

            This might be what culture truly is. (Yes, it can be learned later in life. Yet, this might not be as full, as comprehensive, as easy.)

            Sometimes it can even be a little reliable.

            I have had a softer life than my parent’s generation, and my grandparent’s generation had a harder life still.

            I’m fairly impressed with the grandparent’s generation. There are things to learn from them worth emulating. I’ll admit that some of the lessons are ‘there are costs to this’ and ‘you might not want to do this’.

            There are rather significant variations in my generation. For all my grandparent’s generation has done for us, the winners can be sorted from the losers in my generation.

            You’ve got to turn yourself into someone you can rely on. There is no certainty of any other human in your life.

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      2. Actually most of them have Leftist Activist Privilege, which consists of the delusion that they get to dictate everyone else’s lives, thoughts, and words, and that when they tell their views, they are educating the people they lecture.

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  2. At least in Japan I was treated very politely– the children would come up behind me and touch my hair ;-) As for the rest, I had to tell a phillipino-2nd generation American after she whined on and on about my privileges that I grew up in a trailer with nine other children. It took awhile for her to realize that she had more food, more privileges than I did ;-). The difference? I made my opportunities.

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  3. A kid-not-seeing-skin-color story: When mine were preschoolers and playing at a McD’s Playland, my son came up to me to tell about the kids he was playing with. He said something about a “black girl.” I looked at the kids in the room … several too young and two close to his age … a black boy and a white girl. It took me awhile to figure out that the girl was wearing a black shirt. For what it’s worth, the black boy was wearing a purple shirt. Raising kids has sure pointed up my own assumptions …

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      1. Politically Incorrect, but ROFL funny (especially when told by the mother, complete with stutters and blushes).

        A woman I know told the story about how her son first seen a black man at about the same age as your youngest. His parents used to watch the show COPS and he would watch it with them, and dance to the music that always started and ended the show.
        His mother was at the grocery store and when they went to check out the man in front of them in line was black, her 3-4 year old son started pointing at him and singing, “Bad boy, bad boy…”

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        1. Reminds me of a story Mark Hamill told Adam Carolla on Carolla’s podcast. This vignette occurred shortly after Empire Strikes Back came out.

          Hamill, his wife, and his toddler son were riding up in an elevator to get to their New York apartment. A black gentleman was riding in the elevator with them. His son, who watched a lot of prime time TV at the time, caught sight of the gentleman and said, “Benson!”

          They found it incredibly difficult to finish the ride up without laughing.

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    2. My daughter had her sixth (or maybe her seventh) birthday party at the base child-care center, celebrated with all the kids in her age group at the center. I sent pictures (we were stationed overseas at the time) home to my mother, who showed them to my by-then-very-elderly grandmother and great aunt, who were being cared for in their shared apartment by a visiting practical nurse named Pearl – who was a middle-aged to sort-of-elderly black woman. Mom showed Pearl the pictures of my daughter’s party one day – and to my embarrassment (and total astonishment) I became in Pearl’s eyes, one of those Righteous White People … because I let my daughter play with colored children and have them at her birthday party. (I never met Pearl face to face, but I talked to her once on the telephone.) It was the base child care center – in the 1980s – of COURSE my daughter would have friends of every color and ethnic background. But to Pearl this was something momentous…

      Another story – when I cleared out of base housing at a California base in the early 198s, I hired a cleaner to make the house clean and fit. (Ask some of the other military vets about the insane degree of cleanliness that base houses had to be in, in order that you could clear out of them.) Anyway – I think I hired this woman from some list or other for a couple of hundred dollars: wife of a retired NCO, had a a small housekeeping and cleaning business – and she came to work on the appointed day, scouring the floors, the oven and polishing the windows. She was also middle-aged, black … and she set to work. With her hair tied up in a bandanna, singing spirituals … and also telling me stories of her family (including the son-in-law in jail), giving me advice about how I should be raising my daughter – in every respect, the cliche bossy black domestic servant in an old movie. I was so wigged out by this. I had been told for practically all my life that people like her were a movie cliche, and they didn’t exist in real life. My mother suggested that perhaps it was all a lark on her opart – that she had several degrees and dressed up like a Pointer Sister when she enjoyed herself on weekends…Mom also expressed a wish that I should hire someone like her regularly. No – I could see my life being taken over entirely.

      Third story – In Greenland (my next assignment after the California posting.) There were only 90 Air Force personnel at Sondrestrom, Greenland – ten of them being female. One of those women was black, and we were pretty good friends, situationally speaking. Once a week we would trek around the end of the runway to the Danish side of the base, the international airport and port of entry for all of Greenland – to the SAS hotel, which had a nice little cafeteria on the main floor. They did very nice pastries there, and Jenny and I would have tea and Danish pastries, and enjoy being a little way from the military for a couple of hours. On one of those days, we could not figure out why the party of people at the next table were staring at us. No kidding, it was the concerted stare of people who cannot believe what they were seeing – and Jenny and I were both considerably baffled. We were both pleasant-looking in appearance, didn’t look like movie stars, had not suddenly sprouted extra heads or limbs, or had the front of our shirts or pant-flies undone. Finally, we figured it out: yeah, a black woman and a white woman at a table together. In certain places – and at certain times – that would have been unusual.

      Jenny was a totally middle-class person, who had the same sort of upbringing that I had, in just about every respect. She told me that to her, basically, the color of her skin was a year-round, dark-brown tan. In some ways, that seems pretty radical.

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      1. One of the Army wives at our play group has a little boy, who she started bringing because he doesn’t have any other kids to play with otherwise.
        About two months into coming regularly, he grabbed my girls’ hair and was very obviously feeling it, the patted himself on the head, then patted them on the head over and over; being sweet little monkeys, they did the same, and thought it was a wonderful game.
        She started to ask what the heck he was doing, then you could see her realize he had figured out they have different hair than him, and she was so horrified I had to start laughing at the kids.
        “I was wondering how long that would take… my older girl did the same thing when she figured out that my hair and her hair are different colors, and when her dad got a new hair cut. He’s just figuring out different hair. Guessing daddy has the same sort of hair as him?” When she affirmed that yes, dad has classic African hair, I launched into family stories about various relatives who first met black folks when they were just old enough to be vocal about the differences, but not to be polite, and how embarrassing it was when they can really talk.
        (Short version: one screaming because the guy was walking around with his skin burnt to ash and nobody was helping, and another thinking that a lady was so pretty, would the color rub off?)

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        1. That is indeed an interesting stage for kids. There is a tale in the family about one grandmother who, as a young Southern Baptist girl making her first Catholic friend, asked the new friend to remove her shoes so that (name withheld) could see her cloven hooves.

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          1. *giggles*
            Oh, my….Reminds me…
            I love our little neighbor girl– she’s trying to convert me to Mormonism. Dear Lord, it’s adorable!

            So hard to keep a serious face and explain that yes, while her father and mother says that Mormonism is the True Way, my family does not agree, but she should listen to her parents. That’s one of the teachings of God that we very much agree with, honor thy mother and father, and that means you have to listen to them. (Now, the boys from across the road, who think that because I’m not their mother and the neighbor lady isn’t standing over them they can ignore me telling them not to break things? Turns out that The Mom Voice breeds true, thank goodness. I don’t think any not-a-Sister had ever spoken to them in that tone before….)

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        2. First time I saw a blond man — true blond not “Portuguese blond” which is sort of medium/light brown — I freaked out. I was six, and we were downtown in the big city and I saw him go into a shop. I had nightmares for YEARS. My parents couldn’t figure out because they thought that it was a nightmare to start with. You see, what I told them was that I’d seen a giant doll come to life. (It was the only blond hair I’d seen before!)

          Meanwhile first time I saw a redhead at fourteen, reaction was — Ooooooh.

          I keep telling Dan he was supposed to be a redhead. He has offered to color his hair, but it’s not the same thing!

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            1. No. it was literally believing he was an animated doll. once I figured that wasn’t true, I came to LIKE blond guys. But my toys coming to life was one of my fears as a child, second only to a fear of doppelgangers.

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              1. That is strange– doppelganger– I used to worry about them too. Plus it didn’t help that the parents told me that anything that wasn’t an angel was a demon. It was frightening.

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                  1. Okay, now that is just cruel. Tempting the innocent with a straight line like that, and me with a mouthful of butter that just won’t melt.

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                2. There’s an advantage to lots of anime that I hadn’t considered before… the girls are going to associate “demon” with “anything that’s magical and isn’t an angel” rather than “fallen angel/devil.” (NOT going to work on dividing “magic” from “miracle”– too much depends on definition, and y’all know what I’m MEANING!)

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              2. [Deletes reference to Gaiman’s Coraline]

                My only fear of dopplegangers was that I am one and don’t know it. It probably explains my working overtime at being an original. (Of course, as we all know, it ain’t the hours you put it, it is the work you put out.)

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              3. There was a movie about a doll coming to life, that would be enough to give many nightmares. I don’t recall the title, but believe it was a Stephen King movie.

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                  1. I hadn’t seen the movie. I was just a WEIRD kid. (It’s entirely possible older brother also made my dolls move and told me they’d come alive. I mean, I love him dearly but he IS my older brother.)

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                    1. This is a very old and established meme; I could not attempt to cite a source. Chucky is predated ten years by the Anthony Hopkins movie Magic, about a ventriloquist being controlled by his dummy — not entirely the same thing, but mining the same lode.

                      The Daughtorial Unit, when a small child, never “accepted” a new stuffed toy until I “activated” it by finding a voice for it and creating a character. Sort of the reverse of the Chucky problem.

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                    2. This is a very old and established meme; I could not attempt to cite a source. Chucky is predated ten years by the Anthony Hopkins movie Magic, about a ventriloquist being controlled by his dummy — not entirely the same thing, but mining the same lode.

                      I know of at least one radio show from before WWII that had dolls that were really aliens.

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                  2. Yes, that sounds right, it has been many years since I seen any of it, and I never watched more than bits and pieces of it. It seemed like the type of movie that would be attributed to Stephen King.

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      2. I became in Pearl’s eyes, one of those Righteous White People … because I let my daughter play with colored children and have them at her birthday party.

        Pft. When I was a child, I would have spent time with any of the children of the two (!) black families who lived in my school district when I was very young preferentially over a whole lot of the white kids I knew.

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  4. What is worse is that the original impulse was to end the use of government to grant, withhold or deny rights to certain sectors of the population based on the appearance or origin. Now, of course, the goal is to do just that.

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    1. When the government grants, withholds or denies rights to any sector of the population, be sure that there will be vested interests to exploit the situation.

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      1. Of course. And it is all about finding pretexts to shovel money and goodies to the right people. It still doesn’t mean that I won’t cuss for hours and risk a stroke.
        I am more and more convinced that the only way to curb it is to curb the control by the Gov over money and power.

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  5. The “ginger” jokes coming out of the new Dr. Who, Harry Potter, and some other British fandoms make me wonder if the American joke-makers understand that to be a redhead in Council Housing or in some parts of England is to invite getting beat up or run out of town. Probably not.

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    1. One of the supposed greatest elements to defeat the Klu-Klux-Klan was the introduction of the KKK into a Superman radio program story arc. KKK members supposedly were bitching that even their kids were running around playing Superman vs the KKK, and no one wanted to be the KKK.
      So, hiding it doesn’t do any good, let’s mock it openly.
      And, you know they have no souls.

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  6. I spent years in the military trying to live down the fact that I came from California – the land of nuts, flakes, eccentrics and airheads of every discription. It’s much more fun being from Texas … although there are silly preconceptions about folks from Texas, too.

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    2. I’ve been lucky enough to be able to conceal my origins (I am, very technically, from *cough*San Francisco*cough*) from all but folks close enough to already know better than to assume I match any of the array of stereotypes in any fashion whatever.

      Helps that I got out before I was 4, though. Probably helps even more that I haven’t been more than 20 feet inside California since then, too. :)

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  7. About the resentment people feel when you break their stereotype–I think it’s a reaction to apostasy. When you break stereotype, it isn’t that they were wrong about you from the beginning, it’s that you changed, abandoning the true faith.

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      1. I use the term apostasy because I never conform to the politics people assume for me–for some reason, middle-aged, pear-shaped white women with college degrees are presumed to be leftists. I learned to speak up early, or be treated like a traitor.

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      3. Their faith is the “one true faith” but they don’t admit it is to themselves. [Sad Smile]

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      1. Or at least threatens their beliefs. I’m not sure it forces some of them to think…

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        1. Okay, I stand corrected. Please edit prior remark, striking the phrase “forces them to think.” and replace it with “causes funny feelings in their heads that make them confused and upsets them.”

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          1. “Okay, I stand corrected. Please edit prior remark, striking the phrase “forces them to think.” and replace it with “causes funny feelings in their heads that make them confused and upsets them.””

            Yep. It’s because thinking is HAAAAARD!

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    3. My nanna is from yorkshire and after high school I went with grantparents to visit. I came back with some sort of yorkshire accent at times. It comes and goes, if I get excited people are convinced I wasn’t born here. Here being virginia by way of a naval hospital in California. /shrugs

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      1. Oh, you think you have it bad. Younger kid acquired British accent from a LOT of Shakespeare plays when I was cramming for the Shakespeare series… He defaults into it if nervous.

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        1. Oooh, now I want to get him and my darling husband into a conversation, and see if he’ll unconsciously do the British accent in reaction to the British Colonial English spoken…

          **plots**

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        3. I wonder if that might be part of it. Mhmm I mean not just nervous but excited? Watching the football on a Saturday mornings my folks have said I may as well be on a terrace. Someone said I was bi dialectic?

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          1. Thanks to my English grandparents being totally anal about how we pronounced things, long stretches overseas where most of my friends were Brits, a summer-long stay traveling around England, and a deep immersion in English lit – I sound quite English myself, when I talk – especially when I am angry or upset. Sometimes this has advantages …

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      2. I grew up on the border between a metropolitan area and Hillbillies. I normally speak in midwestern American English, the type that is standard for movies. But when I get to “lecturing”, or get agitated, the Hillbilly comes out in force.

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  8. I was expecting a tall blond guy, because of his name.

    So, you admit to being raaaaacist!!! Don’t try any of that “extrapolated from available data based on past experience to reach a quantum probability” guff. You’ve been well and truly outed.

    Next thing we know you will be “thinking for yourself” and basing your opinions on actual science instead of “settled” science.

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      1. I trust you are familiar with the term “oreo” in such context?

        It is an example of the use of stereotyping to suppress individuals, forcing them into a dictated conformity of opinion and behaviour with a group identity. The fact that few if any members of the defined group may actually subscribe to any of those opinions is overwhelmed by the pressures of conformity. (See recent discussion of “being normal” for elaboration.)

        It has been many years, but I have vague memory of a New Yorker cartoon of a flock of “sheep” grazing in a field, with each and every one of the sheep actually being a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Of course, even if you succeed in convincing every wolf that he/she is actually a sheep the wool you get won’t be worth knitting.

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        1. The Oreo stuff was one of the things that gave me the idea that the whole identity group might, in fact, count as white supremacist. See, if authenticity is a measure of political conformity, and the politics are a superficially sanitized version of segregationist white supremacist politics…

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      2. I HAVE met someone who was supposedly an albino black. I’m not sure I believe it, though, because her eyes were not pink.

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        1. My eye doctor took care of an albino Mexican kid– one of the first things he did was get very good tinted contacts to protect the eyes. Kid still needed sunglasses, and since his folks were very dark he still stood out, but he wasn’t as likely to go blind.

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        2. Not all albinos have pink eyes. With humans, I’ve personally seen very light blue, and a light… I guess you’d say hazel, under the coke-bottle thick glasses. (Every albino I’ve met has bad eyesight, and two were legally blind. I don’t know if it’s correlation or causation because my sample size is very small, and my knowledge of the subject limited.) Two of three also had hair that seemed more platinum-blonde than white, too.

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          1. It’s like horses – there are several varieties of “white” horse. One is more genetically dangerous than the others, but several of them are seriously lacking in pigment and uncomfy for a horse living in bright sunlight.

            So yeah, you can be an albino who’s not all the way albino, but you’re still going to be in trouble in bright sunlight.

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          2. Yeah – the ones I met that didn’t have pink eyes had _very_ pale blue or green? (maybe your hazel). Not sure about the vision – most I knew that wore glasses were wearing sunglasses, and I didn’t ask further.

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              1. It has also been shown in dogs that albinoism has a VERY strong correlation with blindness or VERY bad eyesight. Other than dogs I am unaware of any research done in this area, but had always heard it as a ‘known fact’ that albino people had had bad eyesight.

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    3. Sarah thought I would show up looking like Gaius Julius and wearing lorica segmentata ….

      I confess I was wearing my crested helmet.

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            2. I’ve lived with “socialized health care” since I was 18. I’m now totally disabled. Not saying the health care was the CAUSE, but it certainly didn’t stop it. Being SERIOUSLY brain-dead at times, and willing to do anything once (or more, depending on how much I liked it), I’ve wracked up some terrible injuries that plague me now. Military medicine, for those on active duty, is designed to get you back to duty as soon as possible, not to ensure the problem is “solved”. Obamacare will operate on the same premise — “Let’s get him/her out of the office as soon as possible, regardless of condition, so we can get to the next one.” I see a doctor on Monday (had been scheduled for this coming Friday) where my appointment was scheduled in early January. If Obamacare becomes fully implemented, we’ll all have wait times like that, even for routine care.

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              1. Military medicine, for those on active duty, is designed to get you back to duty as soon as possible, not to ensure the problem is “solved”.

                Plus a dose of whatever the doctor’s pet theories are.

                I’m sure you heard the maybe-they’re-jokes about Navy doctors being the ones that couldn’t afford malpractice insurance as civilians?

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                1. In my experience the doctors weren’t really the problem. Most of them were reasonably competent, they were just paying off their loans. The real problem was the corpsmen (AKA Barry’s shibboleth) who kept people from getting the care they needed, and in one case I’m familiar with, damn near costing a young man his foot.

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                  1. That’s why the joke was about the ones that couldn’t afford liability insurance, rather than the new guys who’d just gotten out of college.

                    You’re lucky. One of my friends was given a heart attack. Literally. The guy screwed up on the dose for steroids to deal with a staph infection; thank God we happened to have shore leave and the local response was all corpsmen that were assigned to the Marine base. (Kicker: that he even had the prescription vanished from his medical record, and he was diagnosed as having had a “panic attack,” when a drinking buddy of the doctor who nearly killed him worked on him. Yeah, panic attacks always result in 24 year old kids keeling over in a steak house.)

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                    1. Yeah, I always got nervous whenever I was dealing with an older doctor. He could have been someone whose calling was to treat those of us underway, but that wasn’t the way to bet.

                      I assiduously avoided medical after they taught me what it felt like to have part of your skin turned inside out. The only time I broke that rule voluntarily was when I dropped a deckplate on my hand. The HM3 sent me off with a icepack (read a no-name ziplock bag that I was supposed to fill with ice from the mess decks) and no MOTRIN! The one time vitamin M would be useful and they don’t bother handing it out.

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                    4. They do. Except, apparently, when it would actually do some good. Or maybe I have one of those faces that cause people to try and cause me pain.

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                    5. Foxfier — well, I was given a heart attack by civilian doctors because, while severely tachicardic, they gave me digitalis. I told them “this is a bad idea. I write mystery.” They failed to believe me.

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              2. I concur – the focus is return to duty, never mind about fixing it permenantly and effectively. My daughter is getting a monthy VA disability payment because of the way the military medical system bollixed up removing her wisdom teeth, and for a training injury which resulted in a permanent spinal nerve injury. (not resulting in paralysis or anything of the sort – but painful now and again.)

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              3. Military medicine can be very good… it can also be very bad. The problem is that when it’s very bad there isn’t really anything a person can do about it unless you use your own funds and go to a civilian doctor. If you can manage to be at a great enough physical distance from a military hospital you can see a civilian doctor. My husband did this and got an MRI and arrived at his next duty station (Clark AB, which had an actual neurosurgeon) with medical proof… after which he got excellent care compared to all the others that simply refused to pass him on to specialists.

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              4. Mike,
                The county health care system is Los Angeles is completely based off of cattle call clinics, even for the specialists, just like the V.A. I’m sure that the L.A. County Heeath Care system (and the V.A. ) will be held up as the model for everyone else to emulate should we wend up with trul y socialized health care. Ask me sometime to recount the bone spurs in my father’s shoulders.

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              5. I dunno. On the one hand, I do think that VA Healthcare, Military Healthcare, and BIA Healthcare probably amount to good models of what a general federal Healthcare system for the public would be like.

                On the other hand, I have severe doubts as to whether what the affordable care act describes can be made into a mess even that functional.

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                1. I was under the military health system (Tri-care) when I was first was hospitalized with my disease. I had a great doctor who realized the shortcomings of the system and put me into a German nephrology ward in a teaching hospital. They diagnosed me. So far I have been to some good doctors and some really really good doctors affiliated with tri-care. I have not been under VA or base hospital care since.– But my case may be different because I am in the rare chronic disease category.

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                  2. Much of the Indian tribes are still extant. This is either a sign that their health services have failed or that they aren’t entirely incompetent, depending on what you think the original purpose was.

                    There are good stories about federal organizations and bad ones.

                    There are relatively functional federal organizations and relatively dysfunctional ones.

                    There is a question of who bells the cat.

                    With Tri-Care and VA, I’d guess at some combination of the faction that supports the military, and the bureaucratic interests. When the military supporting faction is strong enough to get the military funded, and more or less functional, it can keep the healthcare in some measure of order.

                    The Indian health services may not have been run at all times by people primarily interested in keeping the people on the reservations functional, healthy, and in peak fighting condition.

                    There are also issues of scale. As a government type organization gets bigger, I expect certain types of screw up to get worse.

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                    2. Two hundred years ago, and millenia prior, everyone on Earth lived without anything we would recognize as health care. Mankind survived.

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                  3. People can work inside the system to fix stuff.

                    A friend got scoliosis in the Navy. (Which is apparently not totally unknown, but next thing to it– that’s why they only check when you’re a little kid in school.) Now, every time he changes bases– she got out to be a Mom– it’s a search to find a doctor who will actually pay attention to the last five who ran out of options, including saying “it’s all in your head” when the x-ray is in front of them. (Her favorite is “you need to lose weight.” They’ve been using that since she was AT her recommended weight, and I’m shocked she hasn’t threatened to accuse them of sexual harassment for connecting her weight to her spine being crooked. She is…um… even more endowed than I am.)
                    At her current base, she ran into someone who was able to fudge the paperwork so that she actually got a doctor who was willing to believe his eyes, and who didn’t try to prescribe her things that say “DO NOT USE WHEN YOU MAY BECOME PREGNANT.”

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                    1. I had a friend who had some ovary problems and the surgeon in the military hospital, accidentally detached the ovary so it was wandering down her leg. She went home on leave and her mother took her to a good doctor/gynecologist in her home state. BTW she was told she wouldn’t have children. She was the only I have met who successfully sued (her mother actually did it) and received enough money to fix the problem. She was pregnant after I met her.

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                    4. I got “you need to lose weight” when my hormones started to go off kilter. Turns out the hormonal issues make you GAIN weight, so while it’s “associated” they had cause and effect wrong. Doctor FINALLY fixed the hormones (15 years later!) and made it possible for me to lose weight (unfortunately really slow at it.) Also unfortunately it probably cost me the chance to have more kids. BUT their entire fixation was “you must lose weight.”
                      For the record, they did same to Dan. He had pneumonia, went in literally coughing up blood, and doctor told him “the real issue” was that he’d gained weight since last visit. (WHAT?)

                      And these were civilian doctors…

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                    5. I was on prednisone and my nephrologist was telling my that I needed to lose weight. I just sniffed food and I gained weight. This last year my chemo was changed and I started weaning prednisone. I lost thirty pounds on the calories I was eating– so meds cause weight gain— what a concept.

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                    7. Have I growled about my theory that part of the obesity epidemic– a chunk of what’s left after you remove the made up numbers– is due to two generations of hormone use, supplemented by putting soy (which mimics estrogen) in EVERYTHING?!?!?

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              6. we’ll all have wait times like that, even for routine care.

                I’m gonna guess that won’t (quite) be the case. There will probably be certain … work arounds … for certain groups.

                Professional athletes, for example, will have full-time quick response health care. I expect certain professions will find easier access to treatment, say for health care professionals, whose quick treatment and return to work enhances the over all systemic function. This might even accrue to certain “key” administrative slots, such as health care administrators, actuaries, ambulance drivers …

                Talent critical to industries like film/television production — such as (leading) actors (male or female) and directors — might receive expedited health care in order to not have production shut down while the talent is invalided. Certainly any corporation established to handle the finances of a movie star would be willing to procure expedited treatment policies for important corporate assets (e.g., the talent & family.)

                Some unions might also manage to arrange to provide such perquisites to members or leadership. Look at the waivers already established as principle in the Obamacare implementation.

                I trust nobody has any doubt about the willingness of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches to determine that such coverage of their memberships is in the public interest.

                So I don’t really think “we’ll all have wait times like that.” I think while all will be covered, some will prove to be more covered than others.

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              7. One thing I learned from military medicine is that when there is free medical care there will necessarily be bureaucrats whose sole job is to justify why you DON’T need care. It replaces rationing by price with rationing by functionary. Forgive me for not seeing the improvement.

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              8. Portugal. Socialized medicine. Waited six months (or a year. I don’t remember now) to get my impacted wisdom teeth (growing INTO my jaw and close to the optic nerve) removed. Worse, had to go in every morning to see an administrator and confirm it had neither miraculously fixed itself NOR killed me. If I missed one morning, I’d have been taken off the list and have to start again. So I missed my morning classes (waiting to see bureaucrat took between one and three hours wait, depending) for a great part of my second year in college. Which was okay, as I lived zonked on pain pills, so I could not scream out/sleep a little.
                Meanwhile, Dan, same age, discovered same problem one week, had teeth removed the next. No fuss, no muss.
                (The weird thing is Robert has his wisdom teeth — they came up fine. We’re now holding our breath on youngest. Our dentist when he was three told us he would cost us a fortune in orthodontics because his jaw is so tiny. He was wrong. So are his teeth. In fact, between me — huge mouth, tiny teeth — and Dan — tiny mouth, huge teeth (he did have extensive orthodontics, including to remove molars so his teeth WOULD fit) the kids got the best of both worlds with Robert: huge mouth, huge teeth, and Marshall: tiny mouth, tiny teeth. YAY. We totally planned it that way.)

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                    1. I was issued an incomplete set of adult teeth, forced to keep four milk teeth (require more space.) I have had four root canals — you can probably guess which four. Envy can make any of us strike out.

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                    2. Dan’s issues are similar. OTOH either due to being very premature OR to an antibiotic I was given as a child (I’ve been given both stories) I had my first cavity filled at six, same year I got my first adult tooth. I fully expected to have dentures by forty, and probably would have had I been born twenty years younger. As is I have bridges, a missing tooth and a mouth that can only be described as “a wreck.”

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                2. I have huge teeth tiny mouth and it has been a real pain. Cost me lots of money and teeth last year (my teeth are cracking and there is not much they can do about it).

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            3. I beg your pardon. I too was a patient under the military system. I have a lot of stories to tell about that which are too long to relate now. I am totally against what is going on in healthcare right now.

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            4. C’mon now — y’all loved nationalized Health Care when Hillary proposed it.

              Hisssss! spit!

              Ask the nearest cat for a translation.

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                1. Hisss! spit! is often a lead-in to the battle cry, but it’s not the same sound. When my cat cuts loose with the full-throated siren, I come running ready to take out a strange dog, or a strange cat that thought this was their house.

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            1. Jerome K. Jerome (who wrote _Three Men in a Boat_) wrote a Distopia story called “The New Utopia”, in 1891. It starts out:

              “I had spent an extremely interesting evening. I had dined with some very ‘advanced’ friends of mine at the ‘National Socialist Club’. We had had an excellent dinner: the pheasant, stuffed with truffles, was a poem.
              Over the cigars (I must say they do know how to stock good cigars at the National Socialist Club), we had a very instructive discussion about the coming equality of man and the nationalization of capital.”

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            2. well, they tend to have a bunch of theories that are based in Marxism and that they THINK should work — the fact that they’ve never worked anywhere doesn’t seem to get through. Oh, and they often don’t even know the theories are based on marxism/old soviet agit prop.

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              1. Or if they do acknowledge the Marxist origins, they assure you that they know better now, and this time things will be done correctly. The problem was that the Soviet Union was based on an agricultural economy, and of course everyone knows that Marx used the industrial society as the beginning of the creation of the true socialist society.

                And they spend way too much time (if their offices are on the liberal arts/fine arts/psychology/education department end of campus) talking about the problems of cultural hegemony, and of defeating the patriarchy, and the critical theories behind subaltern studies. Oh, yeah, and if they are of a certain age, they also talk a great deal about dependency theory and the ecological crises of capitalism. All of which are $2.00 words for “Marxism.”

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        1. Oh, c’mon, we can measure things down to sub-nanometer and picogram level! Surely it can be measured!

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              1. Circumstances being what they are, we probably don’t want to engage in discussion of the potential for such an implosion creating a singularity, — certainly we should avoid the popular term for such an event — even as his numbers approach the Schwarzschild radius.

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                  1. giggle

                    I think you would have appreciated the day at work where I was asked to guess how many problems upgrading the server would have, and I guessed between three and five thousands. A co-worker complained that he had been criticized for being negative, and I countered that five thousand was very positive. Another one tried to claim it would be complex, but I said that no part of the problems would be imaginary.

                    Ah, geek humor.

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  10. I dunno if government being the source is the best way to describe it. I think it is more correct to say that the ethnic distinctions that have been most politically useful to one faction or another are the ones that have been most strongly preserved.

    German was widely enough spoken that it was the runner up in the official language vote, prior to the constitution. Not a whole lot of politics, and nothing I’ve really noticed in the way of distinction. (Well, the anti-German stuff during WWI that lead to, among others, Eisenhower’s family dropping the German language.)

    The Irish were involved as political factions in various big city machines. Not to mention the cultural issues between Catholics and Protestants getting tied up in the Wet-Dry politics. (Note that Irish language education was private. Public school was in English.) St. Patrick’s Day and all that.

    Whereas Democrats in the South needed a reliably perpetual internal enemy as part of their attempts to justify using terrorism to eliminate the competition. This built upon various efforts to justify slavery. The lasting results may speak for themselves.

    ‘Celebration of Diversity’ is now politically profitable. Bunches of little groups.

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  11. It occurs to me that this is WHY government must be limited. ANY time idiots abuse the power of government so “solve” a “problem” (all due scorn attendant on those quote marks), they exacerbate it. And they usually die before they can collect the opprobrium due them for their moronitude. Government NEVER solves problems; it CREATES THEM.

    And, I realize that — viewed long scale — we’re learning that. Slowly. Painfully. And that there’s hope for humanity in the future. But DAMN!

    It’s hard being around when the lessons are being learned — the hard way.

    M

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    1. Once the government makes a matter — in this instance, race — a matter of “public concern” you can be confident the public will be concerned about it. And that such concern will exacerbate the problem, the same way that being “concerned” about a pimple can produce a boil.

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  12. In the end you’re left with either living up (down) to the stereotype because it’s less trouble than fighting it and/or going completely against it, and having people resent it. It takes a lot more effort, if you’ve been classed as a stereotyped category to be yourself, than it does if you’re not put in a category to begin with.

    In a classic scene from the film of Finian’s Rainbow, the advantages of living down to a stereotype are demonstrated as Howard learns to shuffle.

    People are probably more familiar with the “Camptown Races” scene from Blazing Saddles, but this, I think, best captures the reasons for exploiting a stereotype.

    Of course, Southern folklore is rife with stories about (apparently) slow-witted unsophisticated yokels getting the best of city-slickers. I bet it would be easy to retell the story of Jack, who makes a tidy living in the bean biz by selling diseased cows to sharpies.

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    1. My favorite chief on ship would slowly get a thicker and thicker accent the longer an officer treated him like an idiot; by the end of it, I couldn’t understand on in three words through the drawl, and the officious little boys were REALLY confused.

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    2. Talking about city slickers against country yokels, anybody remember a story about a Martian colonist coming to Earth in search of funding for the colony, and after a while realizing that their best bet for getting the needed money was for the colonists to start running all kinds of sting operations since the ‘sophisticated’ Earthlings were total beginners compared to the colonists for whom trying to cheat each other was something of a national pastime? I remember neither the writer nor the name of the story, just that I liked it.

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  13. I think we genetically overwhelmed them. I think for whatever reason we were more fertile [perhaps the having lost estrus or season] an idea immortalized in our legends, of other human species with trouble reproducing, and we just had more kiddies than they did, intermarried, had kids who looked more like us, and they sort of disappeared. Only they’re still there in our genetics.) And of course at times and in certain places things like mountain ranges might have intervened to isolate our ancestors from the parent species.

    But given how many human species emerged it can’t ALL have been great floods and sudden mountain range (!). It MUST have been preference for “we like those like us more than those others.”

    Funny… had a conversation about this just on Thursday, at playdate. Something in the air?

    Folks are known to pick folks who look “like them,” but at the same time those who are “mixed race” with your own race are also scored as more attractive than those who don’t share your “race” at all.
    (In this case, REALLY need the quote marks because it’s not just “white” and “black,” it’s more like “black Irish” and “Egyptian”– similar genetic background to yourself, but with something else.)

    That would support your theory, since in case of there not being a suitable mate inside of the tribe, the guy would probably go abroad looking for his elf-Wife; their kids would be in very high demand as mates, because they’re Familiar, but Exotic. (Excuse me if I don’t think that a lone woman would be too likely to go wandering around. Sex traitor here, as you know.)

    Assuming your theory about us having no breeding season is right– and it sounds right to me– that would mean that even accepting one HSS might “turn” your entire tribe into HSS eventually, especially if their tribe was anywhere around and looked familiar enough to be cute but different enough to be hot.

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    1. Folks are known to pick folks who look “like them,” but at the same time those who are “mixed race” with your own race are also scored as more attractive than those who don’t share your “race” at all.
      (In this case, REALLY need the quote marks because it’s not just “white” and “black,” it’s more like “black Irish” and “Egyptian”– similar genetic background to yourself, but with something else.)

      Which is driving the racial-classificationists, and the US Census (but I repeat myself), nuts – How does one score ones racial preference indexes by census zone for application of (stolen) largess when the end result of all those people assimilating is that they intermarry and breed? After a couple generations of that, everyone is so scrambled and mixed that the classifications no longer make any sense! What’s a bureaucrat to do?

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      1. Already been answered– one drop rule!

        Haven’t I ranted here about that Pop Strumpet that argued her ex-partner shouldn’t have access to their son, because the father is Norwegan, and due to the one-drop rule her son is black. IIRC, I didn’t know the woman classified herself as “black” until that point, but I may be confusing it with my startment that Jennifer Lopez considers herself “black.”

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        1. And if that weren’t dumb enough, if two enrolled full-blood American Indians (i.e. members of different acknowledged tribes) from different tribes marry, their children might not be counted as tribal members, or (depending on census classification) even as Indians by the federal government. Talk about being shoved into a box and having the lid hammered down on top of you!

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          1. I saw that happen to a family in my community in the 70s/80s. The father was Ute tribal member (his mother was 1/2 Ute and 1/2 some type of hispanic), and his wife was full Shawnee… the children had no tribal affiliation because they were considered half-breeds–

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              1. LOL– oh yea … my nieces and nephews are 1/2 Ute and 1/2 white- They were refused tribal status until recently (you had to have over 50 percent Ute blood). The change was because so many of the Utes were marrying or have sexual congress with whites that the children had become really diluted. ;-)

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                    3. I should mention that tribal membership is a legal claim– so it is a different status than the black one drop rule. Plus tribes on the reservation are under the Federal government and are Federal entities. It makes legal membership and legal claims a lot harder. Plus there are many tribes who don’t have legal status in the US. It also makes it problematic when arresting someone on the reservation or even to send firefighters to fight wildfires on the res. We deal with it a lot here in Nevada. It has only been recently that the tribes and the State government has come to an agreement.

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                2. *laughs* Oh, my, I need to harass cousin H to see if his Scottish blood will still disqualify him; dude looks picture perfect, but that last name is probably an issue.

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              2. Foxfier, the US Supreme Court has ruled that enrolled tribes may decide who is or is not a tribal member. The case was a woman from a New Mexican Pueblo group who married outside of the pueblo. Descent and membership is patrilineal with this group, and her son was denied tribal membership (and benefits) because her husband was not a member.

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                  1. No, you’re right, but it is enshrined in federal law. The gist of the challenge centered on sexism (not fair to say patrilineal descent only), and the Supremes said, “tough patootie. Tribal law trumps women’s rights.” It’s the same reason the Oklahoma Cherokee could expel tribal members who descended from black slaves held by the Cherokee before the Civil War. It’s a weird world, federal law. Especially once money is involved.

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    3. ‘Half-breed’ women on average do tend to be prettier than those of either ‘purebred’ race. I have been known to state this is due to hybrid vigor simply to enjoy the sight of liberals heads exploding and/or keeling over from apoplexy.

      Poke leftists with a stick, just to enjoy the reaction? Who me?

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  14. My grandparents, coming from a different time and circumstances, were so worried when my husband and I got engaged (since I was white and he was black). Their big concern was that our different races meant our cultures were too different and our marriage would be a disaster. I tried to explain that my husband and I actually had so much in common (religion, politics, interests) that our culture was essentially the same, regardless of skin color. They’ve finally come around to seeing it my way, 15 years later :)

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    1. I think my parents are NOW reconciled to my marriage, but my in-laws are still iffy. And frankly, if you see Dan and I in a bad light, we look like siblings. But yep, different cultures. Hard to explain to my parents “but we’re both geeks. Geekdom knows NO borders.”

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      1. Don’t worry about it — in another seventy-five to a hundred years both sets of in-laws, yours AND Dan’s, will be reconciled to the marriage and express no criticisms.

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        1. I don’t know. I mean, I believe in life after death and it won’t be heaven for the ladies in question if they can’t chide. We’re hoping they get to know each other then and, absent language barrier, carry on a war with each other, making themselves perfectly happy ;)

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      2. Well, for true geeks, yes. Geeks who’ve spent too much time being socially awkward in a leftish way? Not so much, just from trying so hard not to be racist. (I suspect this may be why so many folks who aren’t white as snow join Klingon groups. Nobody gives a lot of politically correct BS to a guy wielding a bat’leth.)

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  15. And btw, both of them of in circumstances where those were their choices not only formed lasting friendships with kids of other “races” but – and this is important – completely failed to see the race, to the extent of giving me descriptions of how to find this kid in a crowd to give them a message which included “He’s tall, and he’s wearing a red jacket. I think his backpack is blue” but COMPLETELY ignored “this is one of the five black kids in the school.”

    After a yearly “race consideration” training thing, one of our geeks was freaking out because our geek group wasn’t diverse enough.
    Finally someone dragged him into the big group and said “look, Lewis is black, that Marine who never brings his jacket is black, half of the rest are some sort of Asian and/or Hispanic, and for crying out loud, you’re Jewish!
    We looked like somebody wanted Central Casting to make a point about race, if you ignored that most of us hadn’t seen sunlight in months.

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  16. I have a totally funny story in the “not recognizing the difference”.

    Jean and I were foster-parents for a private agency working with children that had severe emotional and mental problems. We were just one step above “destitute” most of the time (Carter years), and shopped the “big-box” and discount stores almost exclusively. We were in KMart in Littleton one evening with the whole tribe — our own daughter, a very beautiful half-Philipina/white mix young lady, a Vietnamese girl of four, our adopted son who is Hispanic, and another boy that was black. I kept getting odd looks, and couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. This had been my “family” for more than a year, and I took it for granted. Apparently, other people were a) stunned, b) unbelieving, or c) as one woman put it, “you have a most unusual wife”.

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    2. I have a friend who says the police came in and cuffed him while they searched the place, because someone called them about a possible kidnapped little black girl when they saw him and his daughter having breakfast in a local restaurant.

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  17. What has always cracked me up about many who claim to be not in the least bit racist is that, by and large, their spouses are not only the same race, but generally look like they could be 3rd cousins. The vast majority of people are what I “racist where it counts” when it comes to choosing a mate to produce the next generation.

    If there was truly going to be equal opportunity from the standpoint of each child born in the future having a random but statistically equal likelihood of success, it would have to start with equal opportunity of marriage, mating, and child production. By the time you get to employment or even school it’s way too late.

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    1. Actually, Dan and I look like siblings — but we fell in love by phone. I tended to go to tall, very skinny and very blond, which is as different from me as possible.

      I’m not sure it’s “racist” — Foxfier down thread pinned “what is hot” for people. People usually like exotic, just not TOO exotic. My dad’s family is the exception. If they had to cross the sea to find the STRANGEST they could, they would.

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      1. It’s the racism that enables all other racisms. If people mated race-random, after a few generations race would be such a continuum that race wouldn’t be defined and racism couldn’t exist. If you want to call it something else, that’s okay.

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        1. ..which is arguably the case in many communities today. Stand in a mall watching the crowd go by here in Silicon Valley and tell me who is pure anything anymore, with the exception of first generation immigrants.

          As kids around here hit college application age and are confronted with filling out the “race” field for the first time themselves, the parental questions get interesting. “Dad, it doesn’t have room to put Japanese+South Pacific Islander+Portuguese+Creek+Scottish+Irish+Danish. What do I put down?”

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          1. Ah, of course those are not races…let me see…I suppose that would be [Asian]+[South Pacific Islander]+[Latino Caucasian?]+[Native American]+[non-Latino Caucasian]+[non-Latino Caucasian]+[non-Latino Caucasian], thus 3/7ths evil.

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            1. Officially, by fed decree, Portuguese is now Latino/Hispanic.
              Mind you the weird thing is that I was oddly relieved because most people ASSUMED we were and we got the suspicion of unearned success while having to fight for every inch… Mind you, still won’t do me any good…

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              1. Can you point that out to me, Sarah? I had a go-round with the census guy that I wasn’t “White,” my mother was full-blooded Portuguese! He said “So you’re Portuguese?” “Yes.” “That’s still white.”

                I don’t usually make the distinction unless it comes up, but tweaking bureaucrats is fun. And there was no spot for “American” as a race.

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                1. Someone posted the proclamation here a few months ago — guys, anyone?
                  BUT in practical fact the census worker was in the wrong because the rule is “you are what you identify as and they’re not supposed to question you.” The proclamation was supposed to solve why if you spell your name Marquez you’re a minority but if you spell it Marques (and come from a much smaller and poorer country, but never mind that) you’re not. I have this theory eventually the government will make us ALL minorities.

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    2. Problem being the same as any other “racism”– the observer is the one picking out what matters.

      Look at my grandmother: she had a thing about Blacks and Mexicans, but she was a Scottish woman who married part-Indian English guy, and allowed her sons to marry Catholic immigrant women without treating them any worse than anyone else. (Grandma’s picture should be in the dictionary by “prickly” and “strong willed.”)
      My dad is still shocked that she was watching EWTN towards the end. It’s kind of like PETA hosting a BBQ.

      I’m sure the racial counters would look at my husband and I and count us as “the same race”– he looks Italian with some English, and I look like a central casting Irish housewife.
      More understandable for this group, he looks like he’s got Elf blood– including the ears– and I look like a Hobbit.
      Compared to my family… he doesn’t look like us. His limbs are all wrong, his forearms aren’t developed enough, his face is all sharp edges and long instead of being solid and round, he’s kinda tanned looking but can’t tan and has no freckles, and that nose–!
      (He does, however, remind me a lot of my father on some personality points– though he approaches it from the opposite direction.)

      The similarities depend a lot on what you’re focusing on.

      It is funny, though, how often the race obsessed seem to have picked a mate from inside of whatever group they’d count themselves in.

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      1. It is funny, though, how often the race obsessed seem to have picked a mate from inside of whatever group they’d count themselves in.

        To be fair to them, mostly they are against your racism, not their racism.

        Which is why they have striven mightily over the last half century to develop a definition of racism that only applies to “white” people and applies without regard to what their actual actions might be (see discussion: “Tangle of Privilege.”) Racism is a thorny-switch with which to flail their ideological foes (see discussion: “Perfect Enemy* of the Good.”)

        *I confess that this footnote is the only means by which I could force myself to spell that word properly, with terminal “y” instead of doing what my fingers so dearly wished by terminating it with an “a”.

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        1. Have you seen the “it’s racist to marry someone who’s from a different group, because you’re diluting their Authentic Goodness with your white” type thing?

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          1. I got an ear-full one night in college from a black fellow student who complained vociferously because all the nice black men were either gay, Muslim, or dating white girls. According to her, white girls should stay the heck away from the black fraternities and colleges so nice black girls would have a chance. As she ranted, she was standing in front of a mirror and adjusting a see-through (literally) white blouse so that her very elaborate bra would show to best advantage. I had a sneaking suspicion as to why she only seemed to attract sleezy guys, but even then I knew enough just to nod and look sympathetic.

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            1. Very wise. Suggesting that a person’s actions and attitudes might be contributing to failure nodes in their life is undoubtedly raaaaacist, sexist and homophobic and probably violates all sorts of strictures regarding religious proselytizing and cultural diversity.

              Chechnyan Muslims bombing parades (I can make the argument that marathons are merely a form of parade) is a challenge to us to avoid stereotyping (aka, inductive reasoning) in order to preserve our commitment to a diversity that makes us strong (just as eliminating cancer cells from the human body diminishes your cellular diversity, which is why chemotherapy leaves you weaker.)

              Insane mother-killers using a nursery school as a shooting gallery, OTOH, is a challenge to limit our Constitutionally recognized freedom to own the artifacts of self-protection so that we might achieve a uniformity of victimhood.

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            2. I had a black female roommate in the Navy when I was a 2nd class. (not a second class citizen for those who don’t know Navy speak). Anyway she asked to be my roommate because she knew she would have to get a roommate and because I was clean.

              Anyway, one of her boyfriends knocked on the door and I opened it. The boyfriend was really really dark and was really really rude to me — “What are you doing in my girlfriend’s room.” I told him that it was my room too… and she told him that if he was going to be rude to her roommate that he would have to leave. He did… but eventually her friends had to learn to be nice to me.

              She apologized a lot about that one. She didn’t expect it.

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            3. Listening to a talk radio program a long time ago, I heard the exact same rant, though I can’t remember if it was a caller to the program or if they were discussing something someone had said on another radio program.

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            4. I’ve had that exact argument made to me by one of my husband’s relatives…along the lines of it being really unfair that I would “steal” one of the decent black men out there instead of sticking to my own race.

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          2. Only a raaaaascist would make that argument.

            It’s racist to notice race, it’s racist to not notice race, it’s racist to be act white, it’s racist to say that people of a particular “race” all act alike.

            Except, of course, when it is sexist.

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            1. Ever been over to John C. Wright’s blog? His wife is incredibly sweet and nice– and got utterly TROLLSLAMMED because she was “racist” enough to not notice race….

              See, by not identifying her friends by race first, she was pressuring them to act white.

              Because she was on a panel at a con and didn’t do the party line…..

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          3. Our black neighbor was divorced from a black woman from Atlanta, then later married a white woman and moved away from us. He mentioned that after his divorce, he determined not to seek another black mate. He felt that too many black women have a bad attitude and he’d had enough of that. He felt that white women were just nicer people and easier to live with. So was that an observation from one who should know or just post-divorce bitterness?

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            1. My personal theory is that he was looking at the wrong marker– “black women” just tend to fall into the categories that result in the stuff he was objecting to, rather than it being a characteristic of “black women”– but there probably was some post-divorce bitterness in there.

              The biggest aspects that would make for..um.. issues are the high number of fatherless homes that tragically include black families in imbalanced numbers, and the skewed “equal opportunity” stuff.

              I still am insecure about some of the stuff I achieved in the Navy, because a couple of rewards I got (little things, like being allowed to move into the nicer barracks because I was such a not-a-problem) turned out to be just because I’m female.
              It’s poison.

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              1. There has been increasingly recognized research into the harm done by Affirmative Action.

                As University of California, Los Angeles, law professor Richard Sander and legal journalist Stuart Taylor, Jr., describe in their important, recently released book, Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It, one consequence of widespread race-preferential policies is that minority students tend to enroll in colleges and universities where their entering academic credentials put them toward the bottom of the class. While academically gifted under-represented minority students are hardly rare, there are not enough to satisfy the demand of top schools. When the most prestigious schools relax their admissions policies in order to admit more minority students, they start a chain reaction, resulting in a substantial credentials gap at nearly all selective schools.
                http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-sad-irony-of-affirmative-action

                Mind you, such eminent scholars as Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams have been making this argument since the mid-Seventies.

                In his excellent short book Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality professor Sowell examines most of the Civil Rights efforts of the last century and demonstrates that in those cases where they “worked” they were claiming credit for trends already underway, trends which in most cases were slowed by the introduction of the Civil Rights paradigm.

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                1. I remember one Law & Order (wife was an avid watcher) where a black man on trial used that as an argument to justify what he had done, after trying to claim he was innocent went toes-up.

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                  1. That sounds similar to a case a while back about two young men suddenly facing life in prison, simply for having aged a few months. As juvies they got away with all sorts of criminality (“Aww, cut them kids some slack, they’re from deprived backgrounds and nobody taught them any better”) but now that they had passed the magical age line they were expected to face full responsibility for their actions.

                    At the very least, a more rigorous youth penal system would have taught them to do a better job of covering up their tracks.

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                    1. Hmm, didn’t Heinlein have something (dire) to say about the consequences of failing to properly discipline juvenile delinquents?

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                2. Some excellent sections in “Extraordinary, Ordinary People” by Condoleezza Rice on the problems of Affirmative Action, how it should help the best but tends to encourage mediocrity. My wife compared the problem to the patronage system described David Weber’s Honor Harrington series.

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              2. Yeah, I’m pretty sure that the reason I got my first “real job” out of college was because was I was girl with an engineering degree. This was 1981. At the time, I had no clue about affirmative action, but in retrospect, it’s clear that’s what was going on. It gives me very conflicted feelings, especially when I talk with my teen son about the realities of his world today ….

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              3. And here you put your finger on why I was willing to do a lot to advance my fiction career — including hiding my opinions which as you must guess by now was really hard — but NOT trade on my “Latina” status. I have my suspicions REFUSING to do it held me back. It makes me a little bitter, but not a lot now Indie is available. BUT never knowing whether what I’d achieved was really mine or handed to me? That would have corroded my soul.

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    3. Yeah, but she was the prettiest girl in the room… 8^).

      Seriously, I’ve seen some women of other races that I wouldn’t be bothered in the least to marry. There was a Haitian in Panama that was drop-dead gorgeous — one of my friends from that assignment married her and brought her to the States. One of my bosses in the Air Force was one of the “40 families” of Mexico. He married a redhead, and had several redheaded children, one of which I would have been significantly interested in if I hadn’t already been very happily married. Vietnamese, Thai, Filipina, Mallorcan, black, white, Chinese, Japanese, Polynesian — lots of beautiful women, physically and otherwise. I still think I got the best one of the bunch.

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  18. You know, maybe you should write an autobiography. You could title it, “Growing up WHAT??!?”, and fill it with things to make Leftists’ heads explode.

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  19. Some of my siblings don’t even look like they are related to me. ;-) I was asked once if I was adopted because my two sister closest to me in age are brown, and blue-eyed.

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    1. I look 100% Irish. Sib looks like our olive-skinned Cajun grandfather, but with the Cherokee (or French) nose. People tended to assume that I was adopted, or asked if one of our parents worked at the local nuclear facility.

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      1. LOL– ;-) Yea– I look pure Norwegian. I had a Norwegian girl (she came over for school) ask my why I could speak the mother tongue. I had to explain that we had lost the language over a hundred years earlier. The only two things we had in common was the shape of our nose (aristocratic *snort) and blue eyes.

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              1. Don’t be silly. If Cyn decides to “go Viking”, then she’ll have the most up-to-date warship she can find. [Very Big Grin]

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                  1. Shouldn’t a spacesuit helmet have horns, both for antenna and as external module ports (sorta the way we do thumb drives now)?

                    As for a long sword, one of Niven’s variable knives strikes me as very useful for extravehicular activities. Have to be able to remove astro-barnacles and space krakens.

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                  2. My understanding is that the horned helmet was a, IIRC, Celt thing, and not something the vikings actually did.

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                3. I can take commissions on building warships. You’ll definitely wind up with things other people aren’t expecting.

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              2. funny that you would say that– I have been to Denmark and did see the construction of a longship at Roskilde. I was impressed. lol My brother went to San Diego and was what they call a natural seaman. He was able to learn the ropes quickly on those small sailboats. It is in the blood…

                I have never been seasick– and the few times I have been on some interesting waves, I seem to gain my balance very quickly. Not so true on land though. ;-) I can trip over cracks.

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                2. I know the Virginias are designed to operate in shallow water, but I’m pretty sure beaching them is beyond their capabilities. Anyway, I don’t think a submarine is quite the right vessel to instill fear in the hearts of villagers.

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                  1. She needs an LHD, with a full complement of L-CACs.

                    The ship looks like a carrier that has dreams of being a pickup– the tail end flops down to let out the glorified hovercraft, and they carry helos and harriers.

                    ^.^

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                    2. I think the Navy still needs some superior firepower, just to awe a few foolish neighbors. I was thinking of ripping out the 16″ cannon and replacing them with GMLRS, with an auto-reload capability. Replace most of the 8″ guns with Tomahawk launchers, and some of the smaller weaponry with Patriot missiles, chain guns, and maybe a Sidewinder launch system. Rip out the aft 16″ turret, replace it with a hangar deck, and reconfigure the stern for launching/recovering drones, plus room for a Blackhawk or three. Upgrade all the fire suppression systems, electronics, and general living conditions. Sail along a coast and cause unbelievable havoc anywhere from three to three hundred miles inland. For certain backwards people that will not be named, having their village ripped apart from “out of nowhere” would be second only to an ARCLIGHT strike.

                      It would also be the kind of vessel Cyn couldn’t help but love… 8^)

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                    5. Go Gator Navy!

                      Any ship that can land airplanes on the roof, carries a zillion Marines belowdecks and can launch and recover frikken hovercraft is officially in the awesome category as far a I’m concerned.

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                    6. At one time there was a proposal to redo the Iowa classes with a raised hanger and Harrier-capable ski jump ramp deck replacing the rear turret, as well as VLS tubes for Tomahawks and some SM2 AA missiles. Even more extreme was a proposal to put a canted deck on its rear for launching and recovering FA18 Hornets. Far too expensive of course and was never going to happen.

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                    7. Re the aviation conversion of the Iowa-class BBs – talk to anyone who had to try and keep the WWII-era systems on the Iowa class ships up and running and you will get an earful. The armor and mains guns were one thing; the plumbing, electrical and air handling were quite another, to say nothing of the duct-taped-together add-on comm and data systems.

                      Reactivating the BBs was a smart way to put together additional surface action groups and add tomahawk launchers for the Soviets to worry about, but they were really past their prime when sustainability was considered.

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                    8. 90% of the ship design I saw inside Navy ships could’ve been GREATLY improved by having designers talk to the enlisted that actually worked there.

                      Don’t get me started on the “ships made to run with zero human redundancy” designs.

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                    1. You’d also have every mechanic on the boat looking to stuff you into a torpedo tube. Cleaning out condenser heads is not fun.

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                1. Well, Oakland has the “Raiders” already so that’s out …

                  That leaves Santa Barbara … nice smooth beach there.

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                    1. Last “Sambos” diner too, I’m hoping you don’t burn it down during your raid. Oh, and the brew pub on State Street used to have a peach cider that all Vikings will love.

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      2. My older brother looks like some sort of English geek, very pale pasty skin, blue eyes, with wheat-colored hair that was blond when he was young. My younger brother looks like an Irish Spring commercial: curly black hair, green eyes, freckles, very pale rosy skin. I’m right in the middle, with brown hair and sallow skin. But we have similar facial features around the eyes.

        My mom’s got curly black hair and olive skin, and my dad’s brown-haired and rosy skinned, but not as pale as my brothers. One big mix.

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  20. Pingback: On Normality Privilege | Something Fishy

  21. I guess I’m not as enlightened as your sons. I remember leaving Kowloon thinking “Follow the black guy. I’m pretty sure it’s TJ, but even if it isn’t, the odds are pretty good he’s heading back to the ship.” Turns out drinking a meter (not a typo) of beer between a half-dozen or so pints of Murphy’s stout isn’t good for my navigational abilities, or my eyesight. I miss Hong Kong.

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    1. Kids were young. Though they still forget occasionally — the latest being when older friend came to pick Marshall up to go for burgers (before Marsh could drive.) Italian name, kid in gifted classes, yep. Black — though in his defense, I ALSO don’t think he “knew” it. First generation Italian father. The kids had more in common than not. I.e. the other kid’s dad and I were all but twins under the skin, and the kid’s mother was the most UNCOMPLICATED black woman I’ve met (racially speaking. She didn’t care.) Kid is now in air force.

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  23. (though these days people will try to pretend they’re not shunning you in the latter case because you’re being “natural” and “unstudied” and those are supposed to be god things. Never mind. Talk for another time.) /i
    Yes, I suppose being “natural” and “unstudied” is your initial gifting from god/God. ;)

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  24. Taking a quick look at the NY Times’s coverage of the news I found this headline on the Times’ Sunday Magazine page:

    Can a Woman Win the Kentucky Derby?
    By KEITH O’BRIEN

    When did the Derby stop being limited to horses? Was that found to be a haven of equine privilege?

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    1. Nah, never happen. The ladies’ hats will never fit in the starting gates, plus the wind resistance? The horses will win every time.

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  25. Make ’em both race in petticoats. That will change the dynamics.

    I love this site. I can always come here and get a laugh to start my day. Thank you all for your comments, and the hostess’ gracious presence.

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    1. Picturing Satan (wasn’t that the name of the Black Stallion’s son?) in a petticoat made me really glad I had just set down my coffee.

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  26. The reason I say this is “normal privilege” is that you can be lily white, but if you’re a Southerner in NYC, you too will find that they’re trying very hard to put you in a specific box
    My daughter was one of exactly 2 blonds in her high school. She experienced the stereotype of dumb blond much of her time. She’s not dumb. She was a minority student. Her class was about 1/3 Anglo (in Northern New Mexico, Anglo includes blacks), 1/3 Spanish speaking mix of immigrants and descendants of folks who’d been here since the late 1500’s, and 1/3 native Americans. The school had most information signs in 3 languages, English, Spanish, and Tewa.

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    1. Mrs snelson134 is a Jewish gal from Brooklyn / Westchester. When her NYC family and friends found she was marrying a good old goy from Montgomery AL they were seriously warning her that the Klan would be waiting at the airport…..

      Of course, it probably didn’t make them feel any better when the route to the wedding venue took them past a trailer whose yard featured every incarnation of the Confederate flag… 8-)

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      1. Obviously it’s a few hundred miles off (because all the folks of Kentucky heritage will religiously tell you it’s about Hazzard County), but you’re making me picture The Dukes of Hazzard meets The Nanny.

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        1. Alabama and most of the rural South are a completely different world from NYC. However once you adapt, you won’t want to live anywhere else. I’m really a suburban gal, so we now live in a suburb of Dallas. There are plenty of Jewish conveniences in Dallas. (I’m Mrs.((not, not, Ms. I loathe and despise that neologism! I’m very happily married and the past 11 years have been the happiest of my life. I like to be recognized as married.)) snelson134)

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