I leave this quote since it to me captures where we speak past eachother. Debating nature "as is" is a practice for intellectuals. It's not meant for a public of people who have yet to recognize the complex structures that keeps society together. It's also not meant for kids who needs clear guidelines on "proper behavior" when they are not yet old enough to understand the consequences of their behavior.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree here, then. From where I'm at, I don't see anything inherently elitist about discussing the world as it is as opposed to how we'd like it to be -- especially since I believe we're much more likely to find agreement about reality than about objectives.
I personally do recognize natural behavior. I do not disagree that natural behavior exist. I do however see it as a requirement for keeping a society together, that some natural impulses are "trained away" by overlapping principles, ethics and norms. While this goes against nature and our natural instincts, it is a requirement to keep society together and to create a peaceful environment to live in.
I don't believe it's possible, or indeed desirable, to train away our propensity to identify with groups based on characteristics transmitted to us by our parents and society. I think it would be far more productive to try to learn to relate constructively to people who identify with different groups. That, naturally, applies to minority groups just as much as dominant ones.
When I say that recognizing a race is a pathway to racism, I also mean that not recognizing a race is a pathway out of racism. A culture that do have the aim to break down racial seggregation must also disagree with accepting race as a way to distinguish people. This is a form of conscious raising. It should naturally "sting" someone and feel inappropiate to speak about "race" in public. Even using the description "black" about someone should almost require an excuse for doing so. This is not only a cultural norm, it's meant to force each individual to think about what his/her instincts tell him/her to feel.
I think that this is putting the cart before the horse. Using the description "black" is only bad if you believe or feel that "black" carries negative or exclusionary connotations. I think we should work on the connotations, not the word. I only very reluctantly gave up on using the word "negro" (or its Finnish equivalent, "neekeri"). It didn't start out with the ring it has now; it was the word used by American civil rights campaigners like Martin Luther King for their community. They wanted to change the connotations associated with it, not get rid of the word. I only dropped it from my discourse when it was so completely co-opted by racists that I could only use it by including a very lengthy preface describing exactly the sense in which I wanted to use it, which meant that it became an obstacle to communication rather than something that helped it.
The slide from "negro" to "colored" to "black" to "African-American" to "something we shouldn't even mention in polite discourse" isn't doing anything to solve the problem of racism in America; all it's doing is sweeping it under the rug.
An example of this; I, as you, struggle to make race as unimportant as I possible can. I had problems with this goal when I begun my education because I suddenly had to face people from other ethnic backgrounds, an environment which was alien and strange to me. I had a natural instinct of "fear" of the unknown. Over time I managed to break down the natural instinct to be scared and uneased with the prescense of these "new kind". In my attempts I tried to be nice to these strangers and today many of them are my friends. Throughout my lifetime I have broken down the barriers when it comes to facing subgroups different than me. This was true when you went from your teenage interest in women into having women who are "friends only". Same with meeting people who are gay and recognizing them as individuals and "friends only". In each case, using a principle to object a natural impulse of fear and anxiousness when approaching strangers have lead to a positive outcome.
Our experience differs greatly here. I was two when I first went to live abroad, then again when I was six, and again when I was twelve, and yet again when I was fifteen and sixteen.
Probably the most important formative experience of this kind I had was the year I spent in Nepal. I went to a school that was roughly 1/3 Nepalese, 1/3 American, and 1/3 "others." That year included stuff like a staging of the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, where Jesus was played by an Indonesian Muslim, Mary Magdalene by an American Jew, and Judas Iscariot by a Tibetan Buddhist. Not to mention spending all in all about one month sharing very close quarters with all these people, and many more besides, while trekking in the Himalayas. My best friend was Iranian (we still keep in touch, occasionally), I had a terrible crush on a Norwegian, and my prom date was a half-Kenyan, half-Pakistani Muslim (and I had a god-awful crush on her too). We were all ridiculously diverse in values, backgrounds, cultural expectations, and appearances, all thrown together in a big ol' multicolored mess, and it all somehow worked out just fine. For most of us, anyway.
I mean sure, there were the usual teenage cliques and all the general cattiness associated with it, but I honestly can't recall anything that was racially or ethnically or religiously motivated. I personally certainly never liked or disliked or feared any of my schoolmates for these reasons. Yet we were all very conscious about our respective cultures and communities. It's there, it's real, and it wasn't a big deal.
In other places and contexts it is a big deal. A very big deal. And coming from this background, I feel that it's somehow completely wrong-headed to try to address it through bending the sense of words, or pretending that values people attach to them don't exist. I guess in a way I'm still looking for the world that that microcosm of
Lincoln School in Kathmandu promised.
Im getting off topic, but I think I made my point about the difference between nature and principles. I would not officially discuss Obama's color. I am far more interested in his political view, and recognizing the "black community" in the US seems like a glaring problem to me.
But he *is* black, and that *does* make a difference to the way he sees himself, and the way American voters -- black, white, brown, yellow, red, Jewish, Arab, whatever -- see him. It's no use pretending that he isn't, or it doesn't. You say you've befriended people from different ethnic or religious backgrounds: that's a million times more effective in bringing down the barriers that separate us than pretending that those barriers don't exist.
I know my related views of the voting behaviour of white republicans are influenced by the fact I already think they're all a pack of cunts. Is that the right collective noun? Never been sure of that one.
