Posts Tagged ‘race’

Growing up hearing “gentlemen preferred blondes,”  it was easy to believe white girls with blonde hair were more attractive than girls like me, but I came to realize, blondes hadn’t cornered the market on attractiveness, or anything else.Which is why I was fuming recently, when I read an article in a local arts tabloid, in which the author, wrote about her daughter’s African-American hair, because as she wrote, “nobody likes black girls.”

This mother was tying hair to her perception of racial bias against black women. Through my eyes, it seemed the story of a woman passing her hang-ups about race, hair, and attractiveness to her daughter, then blaming others.

We all face prejudices and we all have them.  Some exist because of what we have experienced, others are the result of views we haven’t tested.  We may not be able to control how others view us, but we can’t blame others if the prejudices that hold us back are our own.

We all have things we’d like to change.  Things like skin color,  can’t be changed, but at least with hair we have some options. I won’t pretend to understand the hair troubles of black women, but I know how much hair can impact the way we look or feel.  Even so, hair can only enhance our attractiveness in a  superficial way.

On the heels of that story, came a slew of petty remarks about the hair of Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas–including a tweet from Gabby’s Olympic role model, n Dominique Dawes. In the blogosphere  and on social media, her hair had become a topic of discussion.  convincing me, there IS a bias surrounding Black women’s hair–at least among other African-American women.

My reaction, was the same as Gabby’s, when she said, “Are you kidding me?“

This charming young woman just awed  the world with her gold medal performance, and people picking on her hair???

I shouldn’t be surprised.  Though The Olympics were established to promote excellence, friendship and respect, it is a time, when we all enjoy critiquing people, doing things we can’t.  It is a time when we are comfortable talking about the athletes of other nations, in a way we would never talk to people from those nations.

(Excuse me while I calculate what I could buy, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard a snarky remark about the sturdy women athletes of Eastern Europe.)

It’s probably more nationalism, than racism, but here at home, we were reminded of our own ideas of race, as  the media focused on Gabby being the first African-American to bring home the All-Around Gold in her sport. She won a place in national and international history, but the focus at home was on her place in African-American history.  This puzzles me. It isn’t as if we haven’t seen history-making athletic excellence from African-Americans before. It seemed like a bigger deal to the media than it did to her.  When she was asked how it felt, she responded, “Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

Is there something about her being African-American that made her win more remarkable or less likely?  Is it more amazing for Gabby Douglas to raise the standard of athletic excellence, than it is when Michael Phelps does?

YES and NO.

Yes, we should be surprised.  Gabby was never expected to outperform her teammates.  Coach Bela Karolyi called her a “good average gymnast”.  (Obviously that phrase means something different to him, than to  the rest of us.)  But more than that, she had the kinds of disadvantages, that make it difficult to dream as big as she did.  She was an African-American female, being raised by a single mother of four, struggling to make ends meet, while living on disability. Her father was not a doctor or lawyer, in fact, he was away on military deployment.  She wasn’t a child of privilege, but she believed she could rise above her circumstances.

When she moved to Iowa, to train, she was plunged into a predominantly white community, where folks  preferred Country music, and didn’t understand the rap music she’d enjoyed. She had left her family and everything comfortingly familiar, because she was ready to make the sacrifices necessary to become a champion.  If others harbored prejudice toward her for being black, her friendly smile, buoyant spirit, and relentless determination would soon win them over. Because of this, she came out of nowhere to surprise everyone without Affirmative Action.

So should we be surprised?  Absolutely not.  She is an amazing young American with the kind of drive and attitude it takes to be great. She is a girl who dared to dream, then busted her butt to see if she had the stuff to make her dream come true. My guess is that she cares about her hair as much as any other girl her age, but the vision in her head, was important than what was on it.

Undoubtedly, she will inspire other African-American girls, in the same way Dominique Dawes once inspired her. She will also inspire other athletes and other Olympic hopefuls at home and abroad, but equally important is what her success can teach the rest of us. She has shown what can happen when we rise above the prejudices of others, or our own self-doubts.  More importantly Gabby Douglas reminds us we are more than our skin or hair. How attractive we are or what we can become isn’t about how we look or how others see us, it’s about what we have inside.

Deb’s Note:  My goal in writing it was to emphasize that we cannot be beautiful without self-acceptance. In this age of race-baiting, many are sensitive to any discussion of race. If anything in this article is misconstrued as being racist, this was not my intent.  Racism is abhorrent, and its practice hurts us all.

In my last post, I wrote about DNA and race.  I would have liked to have written a long expository post on the science behind the piece, but instead opted for “readable”.  However, there was still more I wanted to share about my own experience with DNA testing.  I hope it will be of interest to anyone who has ever admired a baby, attributing traits like curly hair, skin color or temperament to  race and breeding.

My father’s family came from Scotland, my mother’s from Mexico.  When I wanted to know more about my roots, I thought DNA would provide some answers.  Perhaps the tests would reveal a proud lineage going back to Glasgow, Camelot, or some other tea-drinking place in the U.K.  Maybe I would learn I was descended from Mayans, Incans or Aztecs.  It seemed so simple. Send some cells, watch the mailbox, wait for the “big reveal.”

To trace one’s family lines, two different kinds of DNA are needed. Male lineage (paternity) is traced through the examination of DNA from the Y-Chromosome, carried by males.   Maternal DNA samples are taken from mitochondrial  DNA, which is passed through females in a line.  Since my father is no longer living, my brother provided DNA to trace my father’s bloodline.  My husband also sent a sample, because he was anxious to know about his Italian heritage. We were all eager to find out who we were.  Finally, the envelope arrived, providing  us with more questions, than answers.

Back then, I proudly thought of my burly kilt-wearing ancestors as a distinct race. I had yet to realize they  were an amalgam of peoples including Vikings, Picts, Brits and Irish who had formed warring clans dating back to Medieval times–so much so that their European migrations and later migrations throughout the United States were usually the result of disagreements with the people around them. What I thought of as a unique bloodline, was actually from many places.  Now that I know more of Scottish history, the most accurate thing I could say of my Scottish roots is:  I come from a long line of people who don’t play well with others.

Answering questions about my nationality was easier before DNA testing.  Because many assume I’m Native American, I’m asked often.  It was convenient to say, “I’m Scottish and Mexican”.  I don’t look typically Mexican, but I always chalked that up to Mexican features made more interesting by the addition of Celtic genes.   In fact, with my height and angular features, I barely pass for Mexican.   Still, I wasn’t expecting what the tests revealed.  Instead of a tidy report of racial mix and geography, I got migration maps and a print out of DNA mutations, unique to our lineage.

It took some research to begin to understand the results, but here’s the short report.  DNA tracking is based on variations and migrations.  Each mutation becomes it’s own subdivision, called a haplo group.  As ancient people migrated, their mutations left a kind of genetic trail.  Turns out, my “Mexican” DNA is from Asia.  It was brought to Mexico by the same people who became American Eskimos and other North American tribes.  As it turns out, I have more genetic similarity to Mongolians than Mayans.  This went along way to explaining the high cheekbones, wide faces and “Asian” eyes that show up on the “Mexican” side of the family.

Certainly, my husband’s DNA would be less confusing, because his family came from a more closely confined part of Italy. The migration of his DNA had a shorter path, out of Northern Africa, through the fertile crescent to Europe.  His haplo group is still common in the Mediterranean, Middle East, and Eastern Europe–especially Albania.

Then there was my paternal line.  We had  a few ideas about who we might be, but they didn’t include being Finnish or Spanish. It turns out that my father’s DNA was as common to the Mediterranean and Italy, as we would have expected my husband’s to be.  The DNA also showed up in often in populations of Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, making it probable that my Calvinist Baptist roots, were preceded by Jewish roots–something we‘d suspected.

So what does it all mean?  It means what we call “race” is really more complicated (or more simple) than most of us think.  We aren’t people of distinct races, but representatives of  the groups with whom we live and breed.  In fact, all the people of the world have beginnings in Eastern Africa.  Geneticists say we are all born of an “Adam” and an “Eve”, being cautious not to suggest they might not be the ones you know from Sunday School.  The qualities we associate with race, like body type, skin color or hair type, are not indicators of race, but rather evidence of dominant genes repeating or best suited-genes surviving.

In Dr. Thomas Spelsberg’s book, The Myth of Race, he explains people who live in places like Scandinavia are not light-skinned because they are Scandinavian, they are light-skinned because those with lighter skin are more apt to survive in Scandinavia.  In the same way, those whose skin is too light for regions with harsh sunlight, will not fare as well as those whose traits are better adapted.  This causes a slow evolution, by which geography influences traits.

DNA is tracked by following mutations from the original line off the alpha couple, Adam & Eve. In other words, we are all just mutant branches of the same family tree.  Asians may have different DNA from Africans, but it isn’t because they are a different race.  The traits we associate with race are result of genetic combinations, not racial variations in DNA.  Recessive genes like blue-eyes can become a dominant trait, when the more dominant trait for brown eyes, becomes less frequent in a given population.

Just like the Scots in my ancestry, we are all just the products of migrating clans.  It will be some time before DNA becomes the standard by which we define who we are, but it seems probable that in the future, questions about race and nationality, will be replaced with conversations about DNA haplo groups.

Deb’s Note: The cost of DNA testing is becoming more reasonable than it was a few years ago, at about $150. per person. National Geographic and Ancestry.com both have registries intended to help people find people who could be related. To learn more about DNA and race, check out  The Myth of Race, by Thomas C. Spelsburg.  

Sometimes when I’m watching politicians, I wonder if they’re really actors.  It’s confusing, because  actors think they’re politicians–doing their best to tell us how to vote. The politicians must be confused too, because they often think they’re scientists or scientists and social engineers. I took Civics, but don’t remember anything entrusting the government with responsibility for interpreting science or re-engineering society for us.  However, I remember be taught about Hitler trying that.

When did it become government’s job to interpret issues for us?  When did they become responsible for legislating what we should think in regards to religion, science or sociology?  It seems legislators are doing their best to make sure we all walk the same dogma, as they purge history books of history, in order to make room for more politically advantageous things.  We are supposed to believe they know best–that they are smarter than the great collective of American thinkers. Whether the issue is climate change, or diversity, any person who refuses to embrace the groupthink is deemed an uneducated moron.  Take for example the controversy regarding Evolution vs. Creationism comes up a lot.  I know what I believe, but I’d never be so arrogant as to suggest it’s the only viewpoint, or the only thing that should be taught.  It takes neither faith, nor intellect to believe something, if you’ve only heard one side.

It’s not just science or history, the government wants to tell us how we should feel about those around us–how we should view people of other lifestyles, religions and races. It is easy for those, like myself, who live in diverse communities with little racism, to deny it’s existence, but racism is alive and well.  Unfortunately, the most insidious form of racism is that which disguises itself as a progressive effort to eradicate racism.

In the most regrettable era of United States history, Africans were treated as subhuman. Wise leaders, struggle, and bloodshed abolished slavery, but even a century later, many still refuse to acknowledge African-Americans as equals. Every minority in this country has faced their own struggles, but none have suffered more than our “Black” citizens.

Black–I think that means all those with brownish skin who are not Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander Caucasian or Hispanic. Not sure, but I think the current politically correct term is African-American.  That’s a silly term, considering there were Africans here, before the British-Americans who wrote the constitution.

I’ve  lost track of all the terms  used for “blacks” in my lifetime, but never mind that, I’m part Mexican and I can’t even figure out what I’m supposed to call myself.  I hear terms like “Mexican-American” will soon be changed to American-Mexican.  It’s semantics, but why are those, who want us to stop labeling and embrace diversity, the biggest purveyors of labels?  I’m part Super Taco, part Big Mac, in other words, I’m American!   Want an affirmative action?  How about we stop classifying people by race?

The “smart” people are doing their best to make sure the rest of us think they way they want us to, but I think it’s time for those know-it-alls to dust off their biology books.  Here’s a little lesson for the smart people, coming straight from a good ol’ girl educated in a pre-progressive public school smack-dab in the center of the oft-maligned state of Arizona:

There is no such thing as race.

My entire life, I was always aware of my skin color and sometimes wondered if  it made me a less desirable specimen of humanity, but I was still raised to be as proud of my European and Hispanic roots, as I was of my American heritage. However, I wanted to know more about where my family came from, so I turned to DNA testing for answers.  I’ve always been fascinated by how  the sequences of four nucleotide bases combine to make each of us–even those who are one of a set of identical twins, unique.   However I was very surprised by what I learned in my latest look at DNA.  My quest to find out about myself, turned into a lesson about the human race.

Notice I didn’t say human races?
That’s right kids, there is only one race. We don’t all look alike, we may not come from the same continents, but we are all the same race with variations.

Those who are still making distinctions between Asians, Blacks and Hispanics may think they’re progressive, but they’re actually very behind the times.  They might as well be back in the 1850s or 1950s, because their view of race is anything but progressive.

Previously, I wrote about the new addition of a dog to our house.  At first I was convinced he was some kind of German Shepherd mix, but as he’s grown, it’s harder to figure out what he is, because he’s an indecipherable mix.  There are DNA tests for dogs, but they wouldn’t tell me much more than I can guess looking at him. My dog, like most Americans,  is the magnificent product of many generations. His breeding is like most of ours–indistinct.   He is a mutt, but he’s not a lesser dog.

No matter what external traits we exhibit, we are all the same species of the same race.  We may have different hair color, eye color or skin color, but we are all the same race.  See, in a lab, even the brightest and best of geneticists can’t identify race.  It’s not that they haven’t figured out how, it’s that there isn’t any genetic difference.  Traits associated with race are the result of adaptations and subtle changes in the DNA.  It doesn’t matter whether you take that as proof of evolution or evidence of intelligent design–the DNA shows every single person on the planet comes out of the same lineage started in Africa.

That’s not politics, not religion, not dogma–it’s science.  Those who believe that the genetic matter of an Asian,  Black, or Hispanic is different than that of a white person, are as naïve as children who believe an egg dyed green will taste different from one dyed pink. Most of the traits we have used to define race are no more substantial than the difference between a brown egg or a white one.  Whether you prefer brown eggs or white ones, once you remove the shell, they’re all just eggs.

Deb’s Note:  In the next edition of de blog, more about DNA, including my own discoveries and explanations of why the use of race labels is an outdated practice.

The inability to see colors, known as color-blindness is a disability, but the politically correct want me to have it.  The enlightened people have lead me to believe seeing color is bad.  They want me to be color-blind.

I was raised without prejudice toward any race.  The relatives I was nearest to were Mexican. They looked like me. The people in my community were mostly white. They looked like my father. My parents were married in the age when it wasn’t common to marry someone who didn’t look more or less like you. My parents were an exception to an unspoken rule.

Our friends didn’t look like each other. Some of them were Mexican. Some were white, some were Asian and some were black. Our Mexican friends & relatives weren’t “Hispanics”, they were just Mexicans. We didn’t call our Asian friends Asians.  We were allowed to refer to their nationality, because back then it was okay to call someone whose family had actually come from China, “Chinese“.  We didn’t have a term for whites.  We didn’t have a term for blacks–mostly we just called everyone by their names.

The community we grew up in was more-or-less integrated. Most of my relatives lived in a Mexican neighborhood.  They weren’t confined there, they chose to live there.  They lived near to people they were related to and people with whom they had things in common. My grandmother’s children built their houses near their mother. Their children tended to do the same. It was a pocket of people who felt comfortable living among each other–a neighborhood of people who shared common language, culture, religion and values.  If “then” had been “now“, maybe someone would have tried to make the world a better place by busing my cousins to a school in a whiter neighborhood.  Thank God we were too primitive for that back then.

Anyone who has lived or worked in a group setting knows, you can put people together, but there is no guarantee they’ll get along.  In fact, the more people you try to homogenize, the more quickly social stratification will occur. Remember high school? Jocks with cheerleaders, academic nerds with others who kept good chemistry notes–it is as much our similarities bringing us together, as it is our differences keeping us apart.

As people we all have stuff in common with other people. As individuals we have differences. We won’t get along with everybody. It isn’t a matter of race. It’s human nature. It’s easy to get along with people who are like us. It takes longer to figure out how to get along with people who aren’t.  But even given a long time to get to know each other, there would still be people we didn’t like.  They’d probably be white, or black, or Hispanic, or Asian, or something else. Sometimes it’s about them, sometimes it’s about us.

It is unlikely that there will come a day when we all get along.  Sorry to disappoint those who work toward world peace, but it’s never going to happen. The realization of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream, is a desirable and reasonable possibility. The realization of Rodney King’s dream is not.

“Can’t we all just get along?”

Maybe, but probably not.
I’m guessing 8O% would be a reasonable goal.
That’s not bad–considering there are a lot of bad people most of us wouldn’t want as friends.

Despite the illogical idealism of the politically correct policies and terms I’ve been trained to use, it’s not working. I’m not color-blind anymore than I’m nonsense-blind. Maybe if I applied myself more to what the enlightened future-thinking anti-racists wanted me to learn, I wouldn’t realize that my friends weren’t all white. Maybe I’m just not getting it, but I know my brown friends are brown and my black friends are black.  I see their skin color. I know I’m not supposed to, but I do.  That’s not all I see.

It’s a racial stereotype that Mexicans like Chihuahuas, but a disproportionately high number of them really do.  I’ve noticed that a disproportionately high number of Hollywood ingenues like chihuahuas too.  So while it is okay to laugh at Paris Hilton for having one, if I laugh at my buddy Sanchez for having one, I’m a racist.

Mexicans are sometimes called “beaners”.  Eating beans is one of those things that is supposed to make those of us “beaners” feel bad about ourselves, but I notice Mexican restaurants put beans on every plate and white people eat them too.
Black-eyed peas are beans, but most Mexicans don’t eat many of those.   So if I ask my friend Sanchez, who cooks almost everything, if he has a good recipe for the black-eyed pea dish called Hoppin’ John, I‘m probably wasting my time, but if I ask a black friend who actually has one, I’m a racist.

We aren’t all alike. Thank the one who created us for that. We are the multi-colored embellishment of the tapestry of a great country. The colors, flavors and traditions of our respective cultures make this land like no other.

People’s faces provide clues of where they have come from.  I like knowing that behind every face is someone who isn’t exactly like me.  Frankly, I’ve seen my own face nearly every day of my life.  At times, I’ve wished for different lips, eyes or hair. If I get bored with my own face, I can hardly imagine the dullness of living in a world where everyone looked like me.

More than what’s visible outside, I like the differences inside too. I learn from other people. You can’t learn much from people who only know what you know or think as you do. I don’t think I’d ever have an original thought if I surrounded myself with people just like me, because other peoples ideas inspire and challenge me.  I’m glad the world isn’t filled with people exactly like me.

If seeing race & color makes me a racist, I’m proud to be one.  I love that there are many and I’m not going to pretend I haven’t noticed.

Deb’s Note: This is my third post related to race–in the short life of de blog, that’s quite a few.  Lest my readers think that I’m obsessed with race, A DISCLAIMER:  Arizona’s recent controversial immigration bill has me thinking about race again–especially in how it has played a part in building this great country.   This piece was previously published, but I chose to run it again as a preliminary to one that will appear on Cinco de Mayo.  I’m on this topic right now, but I won’t be forever.

My skin is brown.  Some people would call me mixed-race.  Mixed-race?   That meaningless term makes me cringe.  In this country a person of mixed ethnicity is an American.  Mixed race??!!??  A triathlon is a mixed race.

I am  SO proud of my ethnic roots, but I’m just another citizen of the world.  My race is, now and has almost always been, a non-issue to me.  However, every now and then my race has been an issue to someone.

Having brown skin gives me an “in” most white people don’t have.  In discussions of race, I’m an insider.  This gives me a special clearance.  I’m allowed to say things that white people are afraid to say.  Next week, I’ll share views on racism, today I’m sharing experience.

Recently, I was talking to a friend who was in terrible pain over a break-up.  His despair had turned him inside out.  I searched for  consoling words.  As he bared his injured heart, it caused me remember a break-up from my past.

I was in college when I fell in love with a nice guy.  I assume he had a soft spot in his head for brown-skinned girls, because his previous girlfriend was one.  That summer, things got serious.  He started dropping hints about us having a future together.  He asked me to travel to Colorado, to meet his parents.  Just before the trip, we walked through the mall, looking at rings–engagement rings.

A couple of days later, we were Colorado-bound.  We spent a week with his folks.  They had a beautiful summer cabin near Pike’s Peak.  They seemed to be lovely, decent people.  They were affluent, but humble and easy going.

There have been times when I felt that somebody’s mother was disapproving, but this time, I felt accepted.  His mother had some paralysis and required assistance with many tasks.  I got to know her well, as I helped her dress and comb her hair each morning.   We got along well.

By my thinking, the the trip was a success.

Right after our return, my would-be fiance said we needed to talk.  As we sat on the couch, he explained his mother didn’t want him to marry a Mexican.  She had told him that if he were to marry me, her grandchildren would be {gasp} minorities.   That was it.  It was over.

My skin was browner that day, than it’s been before or since.  That day I was too brown to be loved.   I was too brown to marry.  I was too  brown to be good enough.  I was just too brown.

Everything was amplified.  I felt browner.

The browner I felt, the smaller they looked.

It took me a long time to get over that–a very long time.  It was painful.  My brown skin and everything inside it hurt.
In my head, I heard the message, “not good enough”.

Not good enough . . not good enough . . not good enough . . not good enough . . . .

I got it.  Damn right!   I really got it.

They weren’t good enough for  me.

It’s never felt better to be brown, than when I realized my skin color saved me from having branches on that family tree.  Thank God, the world doesn’t need any more of “their kind“.