Whitewashing Whites

"White people, am I right?"

Well, maybe. 

It is true, whites dominate the population in terms of social, institutional, and structural power. We've pulled a lot of crap over the centuries. Colonization, genocide, and enslavement of our fellow human beings are all things that can never, ever be righted. These things have damaged generations of people for thousands of years, oppressing them and dominating every part of their lives. And this is something that white people, as a majority with a social responsibility to fix what we've broken, have to address. And now.

Now, I wonder: what about those populations within the overarching and overwhelming "white" category that have themselves received the short end of nearly every stick?

Before anyone jumps down my throat, allow me to explain. 

People of Jewish descent have, since the beginning of recorded history, struggled to survive in this world. True, they are, in many cases but obviously not all, white and therefore have that "pass" in some situations. But as a general rule, time and time again they have encountered an impasse with other whites. In some minds, they are their own category. Not white, not necessarily anything else. Faced with multiple occurrences of slavery, genocide, and horrid amounts of discrimination in today's society, should they be tossed in with the rest of the white population?

Clarification: I am a white woman of European descent. I am not Jewish, so these questions I am posing are purely speculation and thoughts that I have had when discussing race and racial issues with Jewish friends.

Another people within the white category that have persevered much discrimination are those of Irish descent. The constant degradation, assimilation and violence towards the Irish by both the English and American people have affected those living in these countries to this day. Their culture consistently ignored and destroyed by English, enduring famines and death, they got on boats to explore the possibilities of America. Immediately as they arrived, they were hauled off to fight in the Civil War - something they knew little about - and weren't allowed to apply for jobs or enter certain spaces. Today, Irish discrimination runs rampant in comedy and in public holidays (St. Patrick's Day) and is again overlooked. Should they be tossed in with the rest of the population?

Clarification: I am a white woman of English descent. So these questions I am posing are purely speculation and thoughts that I have had when discussing race and racial issues with Irish friends.

Of course, they still have privilege in today's society. 

I am not comparing their struggles to those of minorities. I am simply suggesting that, in contrast with other white populations, these two specific groups have struggled a great deal throughout history. That should not be overlooked. 

When studying whiteness, perhaps we discuss the groups within the white community that were also relentlessly persecuted by whites. Again, NOT to compare their struggles with those of minorities - simply as a separate discussion altogether. 

Are you sure you're not racist

Did you know you can be open-minded and still be somewhat racist.

Many people claim that they are not racist. However, even amongst those people, unconscious racism exists within almost everyone. Some of these include everyday behaviours we have adapted to due to society’s conception towards a group of people. For example:

• Clutching your bag and belongings against your body as you approach a black man walking down a street – having an assumption that all black people steal and are dangerous.
• Getting stuck on a math question and thinking “Hmm, maybe Ki-Hong can help with this… He should be good at these sort of things.” (complimenting someone through the use of stereotypes still counts as a stereotype. It’s still a no no)
• Pointing out that “All lives matter” as a response to the #BlackLivesMatter campaign. Ignoring the problematic issues that black people are facing in today’s society.

Some people won’t want to acknowledge racism. They could feel a sense of guilt and feel uncomfortable admitting it. But the truth is that it is real, and continues to dwell inside of us - which is why we must address it. Maybe once we begin talking about it more, we’ll learn to become considerate of each other :-)

Aliens, Robots, and More, Oh my!

Afflicted with a passionate love for watching Disney movies as I am, I was watching the film “Treasure Planet” the other day, and was struck by the sudden thought that this kids movie (**spoiler!**) has absolutely no problem with showing children alien species interacting and getting along with humans perfectly well, and even cross breeding between species (the Doctor and the Captain end up having children together).  Interesting, says I to myself, that nobody even bats an eye about complete nonsense like this, and yet interracial relationships are blown way out of proportion.  It’s not even remotely strange that a man and an alien would be working together, or a man and a robot, but stick some color in the picture, and suddenly people have to step back!  

I suppose the two examples that come first to my mind are the response to The Princess and the Frog, which was hilarious because Tiana’s prince was colored, and people were in an uproar that she didn’t get a white prince!  There was a giant fuss that this meant that Disney didn’t think that Tiana was good enough for a white prince.  And then there was a fuss that the Prince was light skinned, and so obviously a black man wasn’t good enough to be called a prince!  There is obviously no pleasing everyone in this situation, no matter what Prince they had picked for Tiana, someone would have gotten worked up over.  However, I find it interesting because there was color in the picture— if this had been Repunzel, nobody would have blinked an eye over the color of the prince!

The other example that leaps to mind is the hullabaloo that occurred upon the release of the newest Star Wars movie, over the color of Finn.  I remember being utterly astonished that people were starting the #boycottStarWars trend because one of the characters was black!  I remember being utterly taken aback!  Of all the things to have a problem with in the film, they chose color!  Nobody seemed to care that there were weird aliens and robots in the film, it all came down to color.  

I’m beginning to wonder if that’s because the other aspects of the films were really just so outlandish that people don’t really relate them back to their own lives.  Yes, talking dogs are strange, but we all know that dogs don’t talk (at least, they don’t speak the same way that humans do, being fair).  Yes, aliens are weird, but there aren’t any known aliens on earth.  Yes, robots aren’t really normal, but the kind of robots we see in films are very unlike any robots that we interact with on a daily basis.  It all comes down to familiarity, I think, and we’re familiar with the concept of darker skin around us.  The shocking part of this is that you’d think, with this greater familiarity, we’d perhaps not be shocked when darker skin shows up in our media?  And yet there always is, even though we see people of a variety of ethnic origins in our advertising all the time.  It’s really a question that people take so much more offense to color in stories than they do in advertisements…

CI Dancing

You know when you see something on Facebook that makes you regret logging in altogether?

That was me last week.

On my news feed there was a video of a Cook Island girl doing a traditional Cook Island dance, I watched it out of appreciation and awe because frankly despite Cook Island dance lessons as a kid I still can’t seem to crack it and look like a washing machine on steroids. Anyway, I realised the video had actually been posted on a page dedicated to the glorious 21^st century art form of twerking.

If that wasn’t enough, a lot of the comments were incredibly rude but either went along the lines of being smitten or claiming how disrespectful or innapropriate this is.

Perhaps this ignorance partially stems from the reinforced stereotype of the ‘hula girl’ – graceful, slow moving and delicate. While this isn’t an entirely negative stereotype, it ignores all the different kinds of island dancing just because their cultural costumes may be the same or similar. Ultimately this flattens many cultures into one image that is perpetuated over and over again.

As well as cultural flattening, the comments on this video make it clear there is an under representation of the Pacific Island community in dominant culture or forms of media which are accessible to dominant culture. So, when they are seen (like in this video) they may are forced to represent the entire communities. However this can be problematic when the community is not known because they can be overlooked and associated only with what is known to the audience. This is why twerking was quickly associated with this video, it is the closest association the dominant audience had and they simply hadn’t seen anything like it before.

The comments on this video also took me back to when the Royals came to visit New Zealand in 2014 and were welcomed to the Government House in Wellington with a Powhiri. Coverage from CNN’s Jeanna Moos saw the event reduced to a “royal bummer” as Moos described the haka as “a routine of slapping and thrusting… a cross between a Chippendales lap dance and the mating dance of an emu…”. Although Moos apologized for her sense of humour, she – like the uploader and commentors of the Cook island dancing video, fail to recognize the significance behind what can seem to be on the surface just a dance.

Cook Island dancing, and dancing in general, is a spectacle, but it is not ONLY a spectacle. It is especially not a purely sexually evoking dance to be simply gawked over. As Tali has mentioned in a previous blog post (Footlose), dancing tells stories, expresses emotion and works as an outlet.

All in all, we can’t expect everyone to know everything about every single culture around the world, however there is a certain level of respect that we need to show towards new experiences.

Immigration, the new racism

So I was browsing Facebook casually one evening, probably procrastinating, when I stumbled across this ...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11644044&ref=NZH_FBpage

Upon which I felt, in my soul, racism was about to happen, and sadly I was not proven wrong.

I’m not going to talk about housing prices, because I don't know much about real estate, rather a reaction to the comments from the article and the article itself. Whilst there was a discussion going on, in the comments, there did seem to be a vocal majority that were spewing the same, contradictory arguments. This article seemed to incite fear and panic over Chinese immigrants and investors buying up all the houses and making money. These comments angered me so much that it made me do some work.   

Firstly the main ‘problem’ that people seem to have is that both the buyer and seller are Chinese, the seller owns several properties and the buyer may or may not be immigrating to New Zealand, which has always struck me as strange, they have the money, they can buy what they want. These people are acting like 'their' land is being taken away from them but I'm sure none of them had any intention of buying that particular house in the first place, because if they did they would have. Also there is no sense of irony, just historical amnesia that makes people think that Pakeha's are ingenious to New Zealand.  

Secondly immigration. I don’t know where there is such a fuss about immigration, and in my experience it comes from the Pakeha/European population, as well as certain politicians. These people seem ignorant to the fact that at one point their families would have been immigrants, one of the comments was written by a person from South Africa, the others are just some defensive Pakeha worried about Chinese invaders.

There is a lot of conflation, mark of the plural and strategic essentialism going on here. Not only is there a negative view of Chinese people being throwing around, the actions of a few apparently speak for the majority but also there is an indulgence in stereotypes, hiding behind the old, aggravating idiom, It’s not racist if it’s true, but also stating that it's not just the Chinese but all Asians too, because ...  people are uneducated.   

    

There is some serious Eurocentrism going on, the people in these comments think the east is some invading force here to take ‘our’ lands and that only non-whites are immigrants. I have personal experience to back this up. The reason why I’m not so venomously anti-immigration is because I am the son of immigrants, and so are many of my friends and so is my girlfriend. However I am a white person and my girlfriend is not, and she is constantly asked Where are you from? A question which I have never been asked although we both consider ourselves New Zealanders. This is because of the bias that white is default in New Zealand, although it shouldn’t be, but that is another thing to blame on colonization.

Immigrants are seen as a hive-minded organism that want to invade New Zealand, never mind that we like to pride ourselves on our multiculturalism. There is a real two-face attitude that annoys me.

     
Sorry for the grumble but somedays I get disappointed in my New Zealand.

  

http://www.asiafastfacts.com/images/2.gif  

Chinese Detergent Ad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Few8kJ0zfnY

When I watched this advert, I was shocked because it is surprising to think that this text of advert would be seen in contemporary times. This advert was noticed by many viewers and shared around a range of social mediums. This detergent advertisement brought up a wide amount of outrage and concerns for the brand and product. There are videos of people reacting to the advert and multiple posts about the racism that is conveyed in the text.   

The advert shows that idea of being white and whiteness in society. Whiteness is something has been around for many generations in different forms. It can be seen in the beauty industry and multiple types of advertising. All of these ideas of whiteness show that being white is better and through some products, you can change your complexion and become normal like everyone else. But also you're able to fit in and not feel different anymore, and by changing your colour, you can change your life in the way that you're able to get girls.

This type of advert was common in the19th Century as they showed the biological difference between white and black people. This was mainly to justify that white people were much more superior than blacks and that they were able to clean off the blackness. It was selling racial difference through necessities.

Whiteness has been a big problem for society, from the earlier days till now. But seeing this type of advert is wrong and not acceptable. These adverts are both about cleaning products and that their strength is so strong that able to clean away one's complexion.  

This advert can show different types of racism. It can show some sense of inferential racism. As a racist statement was formulated without bringing the awareness of the racist statements on ground. But this is mainly overt racism. This is the openly and favourable type of racism. It can also show casual racism because advertisers didn't notice it was racist till it was pointed out to them and there was no intention of it being there.

Another thought, is how was this acceptable in the Chinese community and how did the advertiser think this out?

Photo captured from

https://thoughtcatalog.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/kaufmann-mercantile-com.jpeg?w=1140&h=835

https://carlzimring.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/cw_image4-4_revised.jpg

Cultural Appropriation & Coachella "Hipster Headdresses"

We’ve all heard the term, so what exactly does it mean?

Cultural appropriation, simply put, is the adoption or use of elements of one culture by members of a different culture.

Susan Scafidi defined cultural appropriation as “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artefacts from someone else's culture without permission.” This can include unauthorized use of another culture's dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, and so forth. It's most likely to be harmful when the source community is a minority group that has been oppressed or exploited in other ways or when the object of appropriation is particularly sensitive, e.g. a sacred object.

I’m going to take a wild guess, and say that we are all pretty familiar with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. Coachella is cultural appropriation at its finest, where a bunch of hipsters rip-off other cultures traditional (and often sacred) clothing or items, all for the sake of “fashion”. Take for instance the Native American headdress; the notorious “hipster headdresses” of Coachella.

One may argue that cultural appropriation is really cultural appreciation, and that the adopting of aspects from another culture is really all about ‘cultural exchange’. But this tends to be a very grey area, and can often go really wrong.

There are some questions one should consider before incorporating parts of a certain culture that you don’t belong to:

1.       Is it a genuine representation?

2.       Is it a sacred item? Or part of a sacred tradition or ritual?

3.       Who wears the item or participates in the tradition? Just anybody? Or respected members of the community, who had to go through a specific process in order to gain access to it?

4.       Is it from a historically discriminated group? Are they still discriminated against today?

5.       Is it a stereotype?

Now, back to Coachella. The hipsters who wear Native American headdresses at this festival, often do so without taking into consideration any of the above questions. Traditionally, Native American headdresses are worn by males of the American Plains Indians who have earned a place of great respect in their tribe. Originally they were sometimes worn into battle, but they are now primarily used for ceremonial occasions. They are seen as items of great spiritual and political importance. The “hipster headdresses” of Coachella take away the sacred significance of this item, distorting history and cheapening a culture.

So next time you want to dress up as a Native American, Geisha, or Mexican to a Halloween party, think again…