Some miscommunications in a discussion of race/racism

[justira]

I've stayed out of recent debates about race and gender on the internet— I've read most of the relevant material/discussions, but have not posted anything. I mentioned some reasons in a previous post, which basically boil down to "I've been doing research on rape all year and I kind of can't handle talking about misogyny/racism/homophobia/etc right now."

Recently two people I know here on LJ started a discussion about race. This discussion bothered me a lot. Feelings were hurt on both sides. Also, from what I can tell, both sides were earnestly trying to communicate their points. I'm trying to understand where the miscommunication happened, because I'm convinced there's a lot of it in here. There was some hand-wringing about whether I wanted to jump into the fray or not, but I'm not sure how to work through such issues except by having discussions. So here's a try.

I decided to post this in my own journal rather than attempting to comment in either of the participants' journals. This is in part because I expect this to get long, and in part because I am hesitant to invade either of their spaces. Likewise, if you first heard of this discussion here and wouldn't normally engage with these people, please don't bother any of the participants about it on their journals. Part of this discussion is no longer viewable, as the post (which gave a lot of context and valuable information on the participant's position, both in the post itself and in the comments) was friends-locked after its initially public posting. Also, I admit outright that I am trying to read some intent here. If the actual parties involved want to correct me on any such interpretations, I really hope they do.


bottle_of_shine posted her responses to a meme asking about books you've recently read by minority authors. A couple of people, including kenderlyn [here] and shanaqui [here] brought up some good points about the meme. Both were concerned about judging books based on the colour of the author's skin; both were concerned that categorization such as the one employed in the meme may be divisive or promote simplistic views of race/identity. (All terms from the meme: female, African or African-American, Latino/a, Asian or Asian-American, GLBT, Israeli/Arab/Turk/Persian, 'any other "marginalized" authors'). Likewise, both were concerned that this meme was urging people to read for activism, not for fun; that there was something inferior about reading a book for fun.

I think both of these are valid concerns. I do admit I am somewhat suspicious of the meme's wording, since it does seem to focus more on skin colour than cultural upbringing and other major identity factors. kenderlyn was concerned that reading a book simply because it is by a minority author can be seen as patronizing to the author, because they're being read for their skin colour, not their skill as a writer or the strength of their ideas and imagination. shanaqui expressed similar concerns, saying that the meme does not appear to be concerned with content; that reading books that address issues like race, human rights, and sexism is important and valuable.


shanaqui also expressed concern that focusing on non-white groups as different made them more different and excluded.

It's hard, though. I think that sometimes people focus too much on a certain ethnic group not being properly represented, and that just makes them more clearly not a part of everyone else. But if you ignore them, and there is institutional racism or sexism or whatever, then it gets worse too, in a different way.

To illustrate this, she used the example of Welsh-English relations. shanaqui makes repeated attempts to explain the situation in Wales (some of which are no longer publicly available); she (as far as I can tell) earnestly tries to educate her interlocutors about the situation so she can explain why she is is using it as an example for her concerns. The gist of it, as I gather from her explanations, is that Welsh-English relations have historically been quite hostile, that the English oppressed the Welsh for a long time, and that the Welsh have resented the English for this. Today, however, the Welsh no longer seem to be oppressed and are actually the recipients of many beneficiary programs. Yet, many Welsh people hold onto the grudge and still make a lot of noise about English oppression, and this is divisive and unhelpful to current Welsh-English relations. I would also like to point out that shanaqui elsewhere mentioned that there are still highly unsavoury stereotypes against the Welsh in England.

She wraps up her example like so: "But I worry that all this focus on ~diversity~ means that people will actually forget unity." Later on she says: "I'm not saying diversity is a bad thing, I'm saying it is over-emphasised, because the way to get over racism is not to stick people in a box and say You Are Different."

I think this is a valid point. Race is a social construct, and the more we use it to label people, the more discussions we have that divide people along racial lines, the more we reinforce the reality of this social construct. However, this is a damn powerful social construct, with centuries of grief and history behind it. Right now, we cannot pretend race away. We haven't reached that point yet. I like to believe that some day, we will. But right now, race is a reality of our social world, and we have to address it and discuss it and try to root out all the places where racism hides.

shanaqui also says: "We are all part of the same race: the human race. Our DNA is almost the same. I'm not saying this because I'm white (although I am, as you know) and privileged (although I am, as you can tell), I'm saying this because I believe everyone is equal [...] I guess what I want to say is I wish people would embrace the ways we are the same -- we are all humans, we all have emotions and imaginations, hopes and desires, all of it."

As I hope these quotes make clear, shanaqui is clearly not racist. I believe she means all of these things in earnest. And I think these are great things — acknowledging our common humanity. No one can reasonably argue with this.


However, in response to these and other statements by shanaqui, several people attempted to explain to her how her discourse was racist. Please for the love of Betsy: no one has called shanaqui a racist. What people DID try to show her is that she was using racist arguments. I think this is step one of the many misunderstandings that cascaded down this discussion. This is a very common problem. I think it's helpful here to remember that racism does not consist of individual acts of meanness. Racism is a system. When you commit racist acts, you participate in the system. When you use racist arguments or tactics, you participate in that system. I believe that it is in this sense that bottle_of_shine, jabbberwocky, and others on the now-locked post attempted to show shanaqui that she was being racist.

I think this initial misapprehension helped escalate feelings and lead to subsequent misapprehensions. shanaqui at one point admits that she is not familiar with RaceFail'09's "required reading" list (much of which she was linked to in this disucssion), but that she had seen a video that described the difference between calling someone racist and telling them they're being racist. However, once shanaqui made clear that she was not familiar with a lot of the assumed background material for this discussion, it may have been helpful of her interlocutors to make this distinction (a racist/acting racist) absolutely clear. It may have helped he subsequent discussion.


As I see it, the second major misapprehension here is about the Wales example. Everyone who engaged shanaqui in this discussion tried to tell her that this example was inappropriate. To those who have done their extensive RaceFail reading, it is probably immediately apparent why. However, I don't think anyone tried to explain to shanaqui exactly why; they only gave her links. I don't think this is unreasonable. But I think a small summary would have helped. It goes something like this: conflicts among white ethnicities are not invalid or somehow less bad than race-based conflicts. However, because the groups involved are white, they still have white privilege. And this will automatically place them and their problems above coloured people and their problems on the global pecking order. And using white-group conflict examples brings the discussion back to white people and their problems. Again. Like history consistently has done.

Now, here is what I think happened. shanaqui, in good faith, tried to use an example she is intimately familiar with and could speak about with informed confidence. She tried to relate the discussion of race to other conflicts that she is familiar with. Her interlocutors reacted to this example by calling it a derailment of the discussion.

However, after the reactions by bottle_of_shine and others, I think the impression she got was that her interlocutors believed that Wales was in no way analogous or relevant — that the issues she brought up were being dismissed.

bottle_of_shine, jabbberwocky, and others, meanwhile, were only trying to tell her that, while her experiences are valid and address real problems, the way she used them was not helpful in a discussion of race. Not that Wales is not one example of oppression, but that it is an example of a different KIND of oppression. In important ways, Wales cannot be compared to racism, and invoking such white-group conflicts is a widespread tactic used by white people in discussions of racism. Such examples, as a whole — as part of a system — rather than clarifying the issues, tend to obfuscate them— and bring the discussion back to white people and their problems.

It is not that shanaqui's example of Wales can never be a good example of oppression; can never be helpful, relevant, or informative. It was certainly informative; I learned a lot from shanaqui's explanations. I think this issue lies at the heart of a lot of hurt feelings. No one, to my knowledge, was trying to dismiss shanaqui's example and experiences. And shanaqui, likewise, was earnestly attempting to use her experiences to provide examples and help her understand the issues in the discussion, and explain the issues she saw to her interlocutors.

But let me bring this back to an important point that seems to have been lost in the fray. Even though shanaqui's example of Wales was a good example in some ways, it was still a racist tactic because it participates in the system of racism. Let me try to spell this out. It is not that every individual use of white-group conflicts as an example/analogy to race-based conflicts is automatically invalid, or a bad example. It is that every time white people use such examples in discussions of race, they are participating in a system that makes more white voices heard than non-white. These individual people, people like shanaqui, are probably not racist. But they are contributing to racism.

There were a lot of other issues brought up in these discussions, including being colour-blind, structural inequalities in the publishing industry, reading for fun, etc. And there were misunderstandings on those issues, too. But this post is already long, and I mostly wanted to address what I saw as the main miscommunications in this discussion.

So.

shanaqui tried, in good faith, to use examples she was familiar with to engage in a discussion about race. Her interlocutors told her that her example was derailing the discussion. I think shanaqui should have read the links provided her before engaging in further discussion. I also think her interlocutors should have stopped to think about why they weren't getting through to her before continuing to engage her. But everyone runs out of teaspoons eventually. I read this as an unfortunate instance of enough explanation to hurt feelings but not enough to change minds, because everyone was tired of explaining things to everyone else.

I'm writing about this because I think it's important to think about when/why attempts to have discussions about race fail, among friends, among intelligent, non-racist people.

Comments

[shanaqui]

Thank you.

I think I can also provide slightly more context by saying that where I was brought up (I won't say throughout all of Britain), the general attitude is that racism is not just against the colour of skin, but more against general Otherness. When you say "racism", there's certainly an expectation that, in Britain, you're probably going to talk about British Muslims, who have darker skin than native Brits. But it's also more about a general fear of Other, against other religions and laws, which is a big problem for us being brought in by immigrants -- e.g. people calling to establish sharia law (sorry if that is one of the ARGH ARGH HAET MUSLIMS articles, I skimmed the beginning and it didn't seem too bad). Racism isn't just about skin colour, for us, although it's a part: more importantly it's about different cultures clashing, failures to integrate, fears of the Other, different religions.

We don't have "white privilege" as a concept so much, where I grew up. What we're conscious of is, well, "British privilege" (I just made that term up, as far as I know). If you're British, you're okay. If you're not, then there's a problem. That's the kind of thing that pings me as racism. So I think a part of the problem here is that we were operating under different definitions of racism. Which I had accepted, by the time various people started a) freezing threads, b) condescending to me and patting heads and c) personal attacks. But people doing that... doesn't really put one in the mood to continue a discussion! Although I feel like any attempt on my part to explain why I had thought the example relevant would have been dismissed as derailment, probably with a great deal of capslocking.

In case anyone was wondering why the post went f-locked: I'm in my exam period, and trying to write essays. I haven't got the time to give this the attention it deserves, and I wanted more time/space to think about it before trying to engage with it again. To that end, I didn't want random people I don't know coming in through the links that I saw, one of which was titled "I can't believe this idiocy" (although I don't know whose idiocy they referred to: it was not someone who spoke to me about it). Also, in my explaining, I got more personal than I wanted to on that journal, which has a specific more non-personal purpose. (Edit: Oh, in case this is important to anyone, the entire conversations are preserved, as far as I know. I haven't deleted anything, anyway.)

Also, nobody in public called me "a racist", but I did receive an email that did and was extremely accusatory.

Um, I'd also be interested to know -- are any of the responses to "Racefail" by British people (who have never lived in America)? I'd like to see responses that are closer to my social/cultural context...

I... kind of want to ask you to screen this comment, as I'm mostly just responding directly to you and I don't want the argument to start again here. On the other hand, I don't want people to think I'm not prepared to talk about it in the future. I have learned some things about how I will approach this in the future, I just. EXAMS. ESSAYS. MY FUTURE! Heh.

On further thought, don't screen the comment, but I may not respond again here/anywhere, in the interests of actually writing about fear of the Other in Dracula, which is what I'm supposed to be doing!

[justira.livejournal.com]

Thank you for replying.

I admit outright that I'm not nearly as familiar with the discourse on racism in Britain as I am with the American versions. Thanks again for letting me know about these different conceptions of race/racism -- it also really helps explain why it felt like everyone was talking at cross-purposes. I'm pretty sure that there must be discussions of race and racism from the British perspective, but I can't remember offhand which, if any, of the RaceFail posts are. I'll let you know if I remember/find anything like that.

I'm sorry someone did end up calling you racist. I hope I've made it clear that's uncalled-for. It's also a great way to shut down discussion, so whoever's batting that label around isn't doing any sides any favours here.

I understand you're really busy right now, and I appreciate you taking the time to come here and read and respond and try to help me understand what happened. (It's exam/essay time for me, too, of the "if I don't get this shit done I'm not graduating in two weeks" variety.) I hope when you do have time you go through the links people gave you-- they included a lot of good reading that's becoming pretty basic/standard background material for discussing race on the internet. (Of course, it gets fun when we have run-ins between people who assume a basic familiarity with these readings and people who weren't aware of such standards. Awesome.)

I know that you're a reader of SF in particular, though. That's mostly what I read, too. With that in mind, if you have time anytime soon to read just one thing, I really, really recommend that you read deepad's I Didn't Dream of Dragons (http://deepad.livejournal.com/29656.html) (which if I recall at least one other person linked you to as well). It's a powerful, eye-opening piece that pretty much gut-punches you with how white-centric the content of most SF is. Not just white authors or white characters. White-culture tropes, white-culture story structures. Plus, it's only a little over 2,000 words long, so hopefully it wouldn't take too much time.

Good luck on your exams and essays!

[shanaqui]

Argh, I began a response and then I lost it. If anything doesn't follow in what I say now, poke me with a sharp stick. Haha.

I think even within Britain, I'm expecting a bit too much of people in general. Looking at it now, I realise how different my experience is to people who I know come from areas without high populations of British Muslims. I was raised in a mixed environment: British Hindu next door, Welsh family, one of my closest friends was Turkish, the girl I spent most of my schooldays with was a British Muslim, and then, of course, there was the English. And I was raised by someone who deals with the effects of a culture clash every. single. day.

I know one of my best friends, much as I love her, has probably never spoken to a British Muslim, unless one drove her taxi or took her money in a supermarket. I... feel like my parents raised me to examine my own bias without really teaching me about how bias is ingrained in other people. For a long, long time, I was under the impression that everybody in My Enlightened Generation felt the way I did (despite evidence to the contrary re: how I was treated by the English). I feel that's translated into the way I've spoken about this, and I've expected everyone to... well, decide I'm a special snowflake.

Just an example, but. My parents never particularly stopped me from reading anything. But I do recall, on various occasions, my mum taking note of whatever book I was reading, and then asking me about it. I remember some book had a cliché stereotypical view of gypsies, which I swallowed whole. When my mum asked me about it, and I explained what I thought gypsies were like, she said, "Never say that again, ever." I'm not sure I ever did fully understand the issues of gypsies, but I knew that I did not understand.

Man, I don't even know if the "gypsies" example translates. There's a tendency to think of them as filthy, thieves, unable to keep work, sucking up resources that "normal" British people deserve more, law-breaking. There's little recognition that "gypsy" might mean some kind of subculture, it's assumed that people are simply gypsies because they're "too lazy" to be "normal".

The fun thing is that my mum does still have her assumptions -- particularly about sexuality, the English, and Americans. Which I point out to her. I do not suggest for an instant that she is a paragon of virtue!

I guess what I want to say is that if I remain true to the way I was raised, I can't really discuss race at all. My response would be to shrug my shoulders and say, no, I don't know. That doesn't leave me with room for my own opinions on the matter, which is I guess where I clash with myself. It also kind of leaves me feeling that, well, you don't know either. Your opinion, your experience, is not the be all and end all, whether you are white or not.

I think I've been trying to apply my own personal feelings to the whole debate, and it doesn't work. I can say "if everyone thought like me it'd be fine" until I'm blue in the face, but everyone won't think like me, and people don't have to think like me. It's all very well to, on a personal level, say "I don't take any account of skin colour", but a) people won't believe that because they can't see inside my head and heart, and b) they're right not to believe it because people say it and don't mean it literally.

I believe I do mean it literally, but I can't prove it, and the more I protest, the less honest it seems.

[shanaqui]

(Hit comment limit argh! I think my essays are making me too verbose!)

This issue is all very muddied up by my understanding of the Welsh issues, which (hopefully understandably!) seem like The Most Important In The World in my heart of hearts. I... am aware that in the past I have been what I consider to be racist against the English (one of my mother's assumptions that I originally swallowed whole). I believe I'm not that way now, but... do I have any right to ask people to believe it? I guess not. Especially not when I am being so insistent that The Welsh Have Been Oppressed. I feel like I have a naive outlook on this and although I've discussed and studied issues of race, that naivety is at the base of my response -- along with problems of definition. I wouldn't say it's ignorance, because I was made full aware that there are issues of race and inequality, although I think sometimes it looks very like it in what I say.

What I almost want to do is start again, and define what I mean by race, and define what I mean by racism. Because I (and others I've spoken to) suspect that I am operating with a broader definition of both. I'm not in the slightest bit convinced that my definition is invalid in itself, but I am sure that it is not applicable in the same way in this discussion.

Note for anyone/everyone: This is not an attempt at making excuses. Mostly, I am examining why I react/ed the way I do/did. In summary: I do not have the right to special consideration and in this discussion I am not a special snowflake, no matter what my experience is on an individual level.

...I don't think any of that answers your commment. Blargle. I hope it was interesting nonetheless. *grin*

What I do want to talk about, sometime soon, because it is on my mind, is the representation of Welsh/Celtic culture in SF. Which means I will read at least the thing you linked me to first, to get an idea of how other people feel about representation of their culture. For some people, I'm guessing it's not there at all and there are no parallels. For me, I feel it's been hijacked (and that people think that's okay). King Arthur was, after all, first a part of the Welsh tradition. The hijacking might not be modern (I'm looking at you, Geoffrey of Monmouth) but it's become so pervasive that I have trouble convincing people it exists at all. I've got a lot of thoughts on this inspired by studying the Arthurian myth as presented by Sir Thomas Malory, so hopefully I can manage this objectively and in as scholarly a manner as possible.

And now. Now I really must go. And shower, and eat breakfast, and write my essay! Mine is just "must get into second year" style importance, though.

Anyway, thank you, Ira, for trying to understand what is going on, and helping me understand what was going on, and also (I hope) being patient with this long ramble of mine.

Edit: Argh, um. I can't stop thinking about this and what I've said here/everywhere, and my brain keeps going round in circles and some things I wish I hadn't said because this is making it all about me and this issue isn't about me. I'll let it stand because I've put it out there already, but, yeah. I have been thinking all about this since Tuesday night and I keep changing my mind all the time!

[first-seventhe.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I was a watcher of RaceFail in a general sense (in both the "wow, this is fascinating / disturbing / shaming / interesting / awful / educational / awful / really educational" way and in the really embarrassing sort of "OOOH, A CAR WRECK!!" sort of way) and I know that there were definitely a few comments related to the British outlook / "version" of racism and how it might compare or relate to the entire issue. People asked for these links, and someone somewhere has a collection of them in a way that better relates to Britain.

This isn't a "YOU MUST READ IT, NIKKI" comment -- more a comment saying, yeah, I definitely know it's out there if you want to look for it.

rydra_wong has a great collection of all the posts, although I'm not sure how 'descriptive' it will be (whether you will be able to tell which are American, which are British, which are general, etc).

Sorry I can't be of more help; I mostly followed it through metafandom.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I'm a totally random person off justira's friends-of-friends list, but I second the recommendation for deepad's Dragons essay and any of her/his other essays on cultural appropriation and racism -- they're written from the perspective of an Indian SF fan, and so issues of British colonialism and imperialism and their long-lasting after-effects are entertwined with issues of race.

Without reading all the relevant discussion, I don't know if the Wales/England example was necessarily germain to the discussion, except insofar as the experience helped you to understand the issues at hand (I know the aftermath of California's Proposition 8 was what finally got certain things that come up a lot in these discussions to click in my head, despite that also being a "once more with white people" example), but I can see why people reacted badly -- justira explains it pretty well in this post.

That said, I think there's also really interesting dissertation fodder for someone somewhere in a study/comparison of English treatment of Wales and Ireland and British colonialism & imperialism in Asia and Africa in the 18th/19th/20th century. After all, England essentially learned how to do colonialism in Wales and Ireland before inflicting it on the rest of the world, and some of the issues of erasure of language and culture are common across both situations. It's the kind of thing that probably needs its own post/discussion devoted just to it, though -- bringing discussions of British imperialism on a global scale into a discussion of England's attempts to erase Welsh as a language is an entirely different thing than bringing white vs. white cultural/national conflict into a discussion of race. Unless people are talking about racism and Torchwood, I guess, in which case the discussion involves Wales already.

[shanaqui]

One of the primary problems with this discussion is, on reflection, that everybody thought everybody was talking about something else.

I was talking about "minorities" (largely ethnic, although my thoughts apply to LGBT literature as well), other people were talking (and thought I was talking) about "people with different colour skin". Thus, the Welsh count as an ethnic minority (5% of the population of the UK, 0.2% of the population of the world, according to rough estimates and calculations) while we do not count when you are discussing racism based solely on skin colour. My idea of "minorities" includes groups that the discussion (centering around a meme) did not consider, as far as I'm aware: the Welsh, the Irish, the Scots, British Muslims, Jews, ...

The meme I originally objected to arose out of discussions about race defined in the sense I wasn't referring to and don't, as a rule, use. So in a sense I misunderstood the context of the meme. I still have legitimate objections to it, but now is not the time to discuss that with so many misunderstandings and hurt feelings still clouding the issue!

The reason I brought Wales into the discussion at all was as regards the backlash resentment against the English that continues today, what that caused me (and other Welsh people I know) to do, and how that is divisive and unproductive. I feel it is very possible to go too far the other way and to resent someone who has done nothing to you, simply because of history. I believe that's not justified (with full awareness that I was a part of that and now consciously have to try not to be).

Ultimately, I believe I snarled up too many issues together in the same post so that it wasn't clear what my intentions were. I focused on certain examples over others -- partially because they're close to my heart, and partially because the people who replied did, too. Nobody, for example, brought up the question of LGBT literature after a while: it narrowed down to focus on racism. If they had done, again, I have context for that because I'm not straight, and have faced discrimination because of that. I suspect that context would also have helped.

Part of the problem is that I have not been a part of the discussion on race thus far, and also that I am not American. The issues of racism from a British perspective are different, and I was also raised in a very particular environment within that.

Does that make any sense in helping to explain where I was coming from? I'm trying not to talk too much this time. It's... working better re: this only needs one comment!

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

There a lot of in-group speak in lj discussions about racism with can make them difficult to get into for a first-time participant (for one thing, the definition of "racism" used is generally a specialized sociological definition that corrolates more closely with "racial oppression" than with the standard dictionary definition most people are familiar with - it's a narrower category in some ways and a broader one in others). And people really don't like having to stop a discussion to define their terms or explain conversational shorthand to someone who wasn't around for previous rounds of debate.

Bringing up LGTB issue in discussions of race is also a fraught issue, on both sides. It can be just a much a case of derailing as mentioning conflicts between white ethnic groups (i.e. more "let's change the subject to white people and/or me now"). On the other hand, if I had a dollar for every time I've seen someone who's deeply committed to anti-racism and equality and whom I otherwise respect say that LGTB people aren't really discriminated against because they have the option of staying in the closet, I'd be able to buy myself a Dreamwidth account with the cash.

[shanaqui]

The definition of racism I use is "prejudice against a specific group based on skin colour and/or culture and/or religion" (I may be missing something out in that).

The LGBT issue was already there. The original meme was not solely about race, and nor was my post. It became solely about race.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

I suspect the definition they were using is power + (white) priviledge = racism. By that definition, racism is the systemic oppression of members of other races by members of a culturally dominant one. IMO, there are some problems with the definition, if nothing else in that the definition has no room for racism between different minority groups, but it's the definition that's preferred, and it does bring a systemic/societal aspect to the table that the normal definition doesn't. It doesn't really deal with prejudice as much as it does with who has the power (intent is actually largely unimportant according to this definition).

[shanaqui]

Yes, their definition was different to mine, which as I said, was a part of the misunderstanding in the discussion.

"racism is the systemic oppression of members of other races by members of a culturally dominant one" -- that doesn't work, because England vs. Wales didn't count as an example, but it was certainly the case that England was culturally dominant and oppressed the Welsh.

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

England vs. Wales didn't count as an example, but it was certainly the case that England was culturally dominant and oppressed the Welsh.


That's where the power + priviledge definition starts to break down, because it's used specifically for racism but technically could be applied to any kind of oppression if you're going by the literal definition.

I suspect part of it is that while the English and the Welsh definitely considered one another to be seperate races in the past (back when race as a concept was as much about nationality as anything else and people talked about things like "the English race" or "the Anglo-Saxon race and the celtic races"), they're not considered to be different races by modern standards. They're both just thought of as white, and therefore they'd both have white priviledge compared to groups who aren't white. (It does make it tricky to figure out how people ought to define things like ethnic conflicts in former Soviet bloc countries, though, because Serbs and Croatians, for example, are both white, yet there's also clearly a racial/ethnic element to the conflict)

[shanaqui]

I think the Welsh (and Irish, and Scottish) to some extent still do consider themselves different races to the English, while the English do not.

I think the issue was -- someone involved can correct me if I'm wrong -- that the assumption was the discussion was about non-white groups, and that I was bringing a white group into it, which suggests a continuing perception that the problems of white groups are more important than the problems of non-white groups. That's not the intention with me -- in fact, examples I gave intended to portray the case of the Welsh as less important, and more as an example of historic oppression. Admittedly not because we are white, but because it is largely an issue of history. However, it was seen as that because I was talking about minorities and racism in one way, and other people were not.

I feel like that got convoluted... hopefully that's not unclear.

Edit: I can speak English. Honest.

[cap.livejournal.com]

I am not intimately familiar with concepts of race in Serbia and Croatia, but in much of the former Soviet Union the conflicts are understood by the participants in racial terms. To use an example I am more familiar with, Romania historically (up through the end of the last century anyway, I don't know about the last few years) seen itself as a bastion of Roman culture surrounded by Slavs. Similarly, the Romanians have seen themselves as innately superior to the Romani, justifying centuries of oppression. Both of these conflicts are understood in local terms as questions of racial difference, of genetic determination. While Romanians, Hungarians, and Romani have relatively similar coloring and would all be called "white," the situation -- particularly in the case of the Romani -- is far more complicated.

On that note, as far as the terms of discussion for RaceFail, how does one discuss the position of the Romani in Europe?

[elspethdixon.livejournal.com]

as far as the terms of discussion for RaceFail, how does one discuss the position of the Romani in Europe?

I have no idea, honestly. I mean, on the one hand, technically white, but on the other hand, obviously racial discrimination as far as the Nazis were concerned.

[cap.livejournal.com]

Racial discrimination against the Romani is not limited to the Nazis. It has been a problem continuously as long as we have historical records. Romani children are still banned from most schools, jobs are unavailable to adults, healthcare is almost non-existant, and prejudice is nigh on unquestioned. (The Romani are, according to "common knowledge," genetically incapable of anything but anti-social behavior.) As frequently happens in such marginalized communities, crime, alcohol and drug use, and internal exploitation (such as of children -- child brides still exist even though the practice is illigal) is disturbingly commonplace. The skintone of the Romani is relatively light (darker than most Europeans), but apart from that everything points to understanding the situation in terms of racial descrimination. Does the fact that the Romani can be traced to India about 800-ish years ago make it "count." (I am not trying to dismiss what RaceFail are trying to achieve, I just am trying to understand the borders of their model, as this seems to have been the source of the conflict Ira's post addresses.)