![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Or, How I Nearly Declared War on the Tsalagi
It's Blog Against Racism Week.
I'm not sure I would be posting anything in relation to it, if it wasn't also a convenient impetus to get me posting something again. But it is, and I really ought to, so I am.
The first post I saw about BARW (as opposed to the icons, I started seeing those days earlier) instructed me that one thing I should do if I was going to participate was change my default icon to a race-related one, if it wasn't one already... and hey look, my default icon is still my Katrina icon, like it has been pretty much since the levees broke. You bet I'm still angry.
But that's kind of misleading, because this post isn't about the black/white racial divide in America, or anywhere else.
It's about me.
*
One day, almost fifteen years ago now, I had the opportunity to meet Wilma Mankiller, who at the time was War Chief of the Western Cherokee Nation. I had gone to hear her speak, and she was gracious enough to attend a reception afterwards and speak further with attendees in a more conversational setting.
And she called me an Anglo.
That was the first experience I had with racist language directed *at* me. I was an adult at the time.
Now, let me back up a bit and explain why it was racist, and why it was more hurtful than the average reader might expect.
First of all, I look white or almost-entirely-white to most people. (Some people think I look Jewish; others can't see where anyone would get that; I'm not in fact Jewish.) I was raised white, partly because my family is all-white on one side (or they are now that Italians and Italian-Americans are considered white by most people) and partly because the other side of my family is so ashamed of where they came from that I didn't know about it until I was in college and discovered what a lot of little things about that side of the family that no one ever put together for me actually meant, and then got hold of the genealogy one of my great-uncles had had researched when I was a kid.
As it turned out, there were a good number of intermarriages in that genealogy between the families my French-Canadian ancestors descend from, and First Nations tribal members. (First Nations, Native Canadians, Indigenous North Americans... I'm not actually a Native American, and I'm certainly not Indian.) Most or all of the latter were Micmaq -- the genealogical records frustratingly often leave out tribes of origin and even names especially of women, but going on geography, the Micmaq lived in the area and were likeliest to intermarry with their European neighbours -- and in fact there were frequent enough such intermarriages, among my actual ancestors and others in their communities, that there was often a hybrid French Catholic / Native culture in effect. People from such cultural origins are called Metis.
I mentioned that the geography means that most or all of my non-white ancestors were probably Micmaq. For the 98% of you reading this who aren't familiar with past tribal political boundaries as they relate to modern national political boundaries, that means that my French-Canadian/Micmaq/Metis ancestors didn't live in Quebec. They lived in Acadia, in a part of that colony which is now known as Nova Scotia. It's now known as Nova Scotia because France ceded control of the territory to England in a treaty, and England later decided they didn't want all those half-savage French Catholics in their new colony, and forcibly deported the vast majority of Acadiens.
My ancestors happened, mostly, to be sent to what is now Maine (part of Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time). I can't actually tell from the records whether any of my direct ancestors were sold by the captain of the deportation ship they were on into indentured servitude, as was often the case when Acadiens were put off into New England colonies. It doesn't matter much, because Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law soon after the Acadiens began arriving that left them with almost no options other than indentured servitude or institutionalisation. I can be pretty sure that families were broken up, husbands separated from wives and parents from children, because that was standard practice during the Expulsion (or, as it's called en francais, le Grand Dérangement).
All of this upheaval -- the deported Acadiens were not allowed to keep many (if any) possessions other than what they wore in most cases, family members separated during deportation often never managed to reunite, and younger members of multi-generational families are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to reconstructing lost family histories -- means that the genealogical record is heartbreakingly spotty for this period. What I do know is that most of my immediate ancestors were in Maine or Quebec (where some Acadiens were deported to right off, and where others found their way to later, and were in either case treated as second-class citoyens there) right up until the time of my great-grandparents.
Even today, in much of Maine, someone who speaks French as their first language is most likely from a family poorer and more disadvantaged than your average working-class Maine family, and not unlikely to be treated like a second-class citizen, if not some sort of cancer on society. My grandparents both speak French fluently, speak it with their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and siblings (or did when they were alive).
They used to speak it with their children, too; my biological father spoke only French until he was five years old. Then, since it was time for him to begin attending school, the family prepared him by switching to speaking only English with him. I now know more French than he does, and it's not as much as one might suppose from the French words sprinkled through this post. The only French I actually learned from my own family is fermer le bouche.
Oh, and by the way? There isn't a drop of "Anglo" British Isles blood on either side of my family, unless there was a child-of-rape in there somewhere. The "Anglos" are the ones who sold my ancestors into what amounted to slavery, while stealing or destroying everything they had created and worked all their lives to maintain, not to mention as much of their culture as the English could stamp out.
So... yeah. Here was a well-known and respected tribal leader -- albeit of a tribe pretty much completely unrelated to mine, though there are certain similarities of history (yes, a fair number of Acadiens, Metis and otherwise, did die during the weeks- or months-long sea voyages, and while they mostly weren't my direct ancestors for the obvious reason, neither could many of Ms Mankiller's direct ancestors have died on the Trail of Tears, for the same reason) -- lumped me in with the ethnic group historically responsible for repressing almost all of my ancestors on this continent.
(On the white side, too: my mother is half Italian, one quarter Czech and one quarter Finnish, second generation American on her father's side and third on her mother's. The Depression and the post-war era weren't as difficult for white immigrants as they were for non-whites, but neither was my mother's family welcomed by the Daughters of the American Revolution or Mayflower descendants.)
As I said above, some people think I look Jewish; many Europeans can see the Native features in my face; because I often wear a headcovering people not infrequently ask if I'm Muslim; and once I was even taken for Egyptian. I do not, however, look Anglo by any stretch of the imagination.
*
There's a Bureau of Indian Affairs -- that's the archaically-styled US government agency that regulates which First Nations within the borders of the United States get to be self-governing and to what degree -- guideline for tribal recognition that says, in order for a tribe to be recognised, it has to have maintained a continuous, distinct and authentic culture since pre-colonial times. This doesn't actually piss me off in regards to myself, since my people aren't from what's now the US of A, but it damned sure pisses me off on behalf of all the children of all the tribes who were torn away from their parents early in the 20th century to be locked up in church-run reformatory schools where they were beaten if they spoke their own language, and it pisses me off on principle, because it *would* exclude me from federal recognition if the borders were a little different and Nova Scotia was part of New England.
*
I am not going to answer any questions that would involve me speaking for all Indigenous North Americans, or all Native Canadians, or all Metis, or all mixed-race people, or all people who are mistaken for white, or any other group that's comprised of individuals who may share similarities of history and/or experience but have each lived only their own experience, and thus, in the end, can speak only to, for, and from their own experience. I state this explicitly because a distinctly less-white mixed friend of mine recently explained to me that she wasn't going to be posting anything for Blog Against Racism Week because so much of her audience would take her to be speaking as A Representative of Her Race, as opposed to one non-representative member of her race.
Like it says at the top of the post, this is about me.
*
I've actually been mulling a ranty-ish post about this -- about my family history and racial/ethnic identity -- for a long while now, and just never got around to it. If nothing else, BARW gave me that impetus to get it out. Which means that it did accomplish something... for me. Who's the only person I'm qualified to speak for.
I'm not sure I would be posting anything in relation to it, if it wasn't also a convenient impetus to get me posting something again. But it is, and I really ought to, so I am.
The first post I saw about BARW (as opposed to the icons, I started seeing those days earlier) instructed me that one thing I should do if I was going to participate was change my default icon to a race-related one, if it wasn't one already... and hey look, my default icon is still my Katrina icon, like it has been pretty much since the levees broke. You bet I'm still angry.
But that's kind of misleading, because this post isn't about the black/white racial divide in America, or anywhere else.
It's about me.
*
One day, almost fifteen years ago now, I had the opportunity to meet Wilma Mankiller, who at the time was War Chief of the Western Cherokee Nation. I had gone to hear her speak, and she was gracious enough to attend a reception afterwards and speak further with attendees in a more conversational setting.
And she called me an Anglo.
That was the first experience I had with racist language directed *at* me. I was an adult at the time.
Now, let me back up a bit and explain why it was racist, and why it was more hurtful than the average reader might expect.
First of all, I look white or almost-entirely-white to most people. (Some people think I look Jewish; others can't see where anyone would get that; I'm not in fact Jewish.) I was raised white, partly because my family is all-white on one side (or they are now that Italians and Italian-Americans are considered white by most people) and partly because the other side of my family is so ashamed of where they came from that I didn't know about it until I was in college and discovered what a lot of little things about that side of the family that no one ever put together for me actually meant, and then got hold of the genealogy one of my great-uncles had had researched when I was a kid.
As it turned out, there were a good number of intermarriages in that genealogy between the families my French-Canadian ancestors descend from, and First Nations tribal members. (First Nations, Native Canadians, Indigenous North Americans... I'm not actually a Native American, and I'm certainly not Indian.) Most or all of the latter were Micmaq -- the genealogical records frustratingly often leave out tribes of origin and even names especially of women, but going on geography, the Micmaq lived in the area and were likeliest to intermarry with their European neighbours -- and in fact there were frequent enough such intermarriages, among my actual ancestors and others in their communities, that there was often a hybrid French Catholic / Native culture in effect. People from such cultural origins are called Metis.
I mentioned that the geography means that most or all of my non-white ancestors were probably Micmaq. For the 98% of you reading this who aren't familiar with past tribal political boundaries as they relate to modern national political boundaries, that means that my French-Canadian/Micmaq/Metis ancestors didn't live in Quebec. They lived in Acadia, in a part of that colony which is now known as Nova Scotia. It's now known as Nova Scotia because France ceded control of the territory to England in a treaty, and England later decided they didn't want all those half-savage French Catholics in their new colony, and forcibly deported the vast majority of Acadiens.
My ancestors happened, mostly, to be sent to what is now Maine (part of Massachusetts Bay Colony at the time). I can't actually tell from the records whether any of my direct ancestors were sold by the captain of the deportation ship they were on into indentured servitude, as was often the case when Acadiens were put off into New England colonies. It doesn't matter much, because Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law soon after the Acadiens began arriving that left them with almost no options other than indentured servitude or institutionalisation. I can be pretty sure that families were broken up, husbands separated from wives and parents from children, because that was standard practice during the Expulsion (or, as it's called en francais, le Grand Dérangement).
All of this upheaval -- the deported Acadiens were not allowed to keep many (if any) possessions other than what they wore in most cases, family members separated during deportation often never managed to reunite, and younger members of multi-generational families are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to reconstructing lost family histories -- means that the genealogical record is heartbreakingly spotty for this period. What I do know is that most of my immediate ancestors were in Maine or Quebec (where some Acadiens were deported to right off, and where others found their way to later, and were in either case treated as second-class citoyens there) right up until the time of my great-grandparents.
Even today, in much of Maine, someone who speaks French as their first language is most likely from a family poorer and more disadvantaged than your average working-class Maine family, and not unlikely to be treated like a second-class citizen, if not some sort of cancer on society. My grandparents both speak French fluently, speak it with their parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and siblings (or did when they were alive).
They used to speak it with their children, too; my biological father spoke only French until he was five years old. Then, since it was time for him to begin attending school, the family prepared him by switching to speaking only English with him. I now know more French than he does, and it's not as much as one might suppose from the French words sprinkled through this post. The only French I actually learned from my own family is fermer le bouche.
Oh, and by the way? There isn't a drop of "Anglo" British Isles blood on either side of my family, unless there was a child-of-rape in there somewhere. The "Anglos" are the ones who sold my ancestors into what amounted to slavery, while stealing or destroying everything they had created and worked all their lives to maintain, not to mention as much of their culture as the English could stamp out.
So... yeah. Here was a well-known and respected tribal leader -- albeit of a tribe pretty much completely unrelated to mine, though there are certain similarities of history (yes, a fair number of Acadiens, Metis and otherwise, did die during the weeks- or months-long sea voyages, and while they mostly weren't my direct ancestors for the obvious reason, neither could many of Ms Mankiller's direct ancestors have died on the Trail of Tears, for the same reason) -- lumped me in with the ethnic group historically responsible for repressing almost all of my ancestors on this continent.
(On the white side, too: my mother is half Italian, one quarter Czech and one quarter Finnish, second generation American on her father's side and third on her mother's. The Depression and the post-war era weren't as difficult for white immigrants as they were for non-whites, but neither was my mother's family welcomed by the Daughters of the American Revolution or Mayflower descendants.)
As I said above, some people think I look Jewish; many Europeans can see the Native features in my face; because I often wear a headcovering people not infrequently ask if I'm Muslim; and once I was even taken for Egyptian. I do not, however, look Anglo by any stretch of the imagination.
*
There's a Bureau of Indian Affairs -- that's the archaically-styled US government agency that regulates which First Nations within the borders of the United States get to be self-governing and to what degree -- guideline for tribal recognition that says, in order for a tribe to be recognised, it has to have maintained a continuous, distinct and authentic culture since pre-colonial times. This doesn't actually piss me off in regards to myself, since my people aren't from what's now the US of A, but it damned sure pisses me off on behalf of all the children of all the tribes who were torn away from their parents early in the 20th century to be locked up in church-run reformatory schools where they were beaten if they spoke their own language, and it pisses me off on principle, because it *would* exclude me from federal recognition if the borders were a little different and Nova Scotia was part of New England.
*
I am not going to answer any questions that would involve me speaking for all Indigenous North Americans, or all Native Canadians, or all Metis, or all mixed-race people, or all people who are mistaken for white, or any other group that's comprised of individuals who may share similarities of history and/or experience but have each lived only their own experience, and thus, in the end, can speak only to, for, and from their own experience. I state this explicitly because a distinctly less-white mixed friend of mine recently explained to me that she wasn't going to be posting anything for Blog Against Racism Week because so much of her audience would take her to be speaking as A Representative of Her Race, as opposed to one non-representative member of her race.
Like it says at the top of the post, this is about me.
*
I've actually been mulling a ranty-ish post about this -- about my family history and racial/ethnic identity -- for a long while now, and just never got around to it. If nothing else, BARW gave me that impetus to get it out. Which means that it did accomplish something... for me. Who's the only person I'm qualified to speak for.
no subject
For sure - and I've said this before - it's one thing to be white(looking) and another to be black(looking), and the whiter you look, the less likely you are to experience the same kind of institutionalised problems that a black looking person will. But you've experienced hard-out prejudice and worse, *assumption* about your race with a term that incorporates a lot of privilege which, in reality, is not about who you are at all.
FWIW, I hate being called "anglo" anything too. My ancestors are almost all Irish and Scots, though there is probably an English person in there somewhere. I'm not Anglo Saxon and nor is my culture. (I will accept "Anglo-Celtic" to describe the roots of NZ Pakeha culture.)
no subject
One of the insidious internalised-racism things that the Native communities get is people with more white blood being treated, or feeling like they're being treated, as less Native by those with less white blood. Even if it's a matter of 1/4 versus 1/2, though certainly it gets worse as you approach 1/16 versus 3/4. (And then there are the tribes where BIA-appointed -- yeah, unfortunately you read that right -- tribal figureheads have historically been either the whitest by blood, or the whitest-acting, or both, and they would marginalise or even disenfranchise those who were fuller-blooded and/or more inclined to hold to traditional ways... you can imagine the sorts of resentments that built up in those nations.) There really aren't any nations left in the 48 "continental" US states that don't have at least as many part-bloods as full-bloods, and the Cherokee are no exception. Heck, the person standing next to me who was lumped in with Mankiller's "Anglo" slur has enough Cherokee blood to live on the Eastern nation's reservation (and traces descent from the Eastern, not the Western, branch) but has predominantly Scottish and Irish blood and, being pink-skinned and red-haired, looks rather less Native even than I do. To the casual observer.
And part of what incensed me so much, of course, was that she was a tribal leader, and damned well ought to know better than to assume *anyone* doesn't have Native blood. Most Nations used to be rather laissez-faire about adopting and/or marrying whites, blacks, Asians, members of other tribes, and anyone else who happened to be around and could fit in with the community. Too many of us have turned -- their backs, or their hatred, or both -- on their kin with noticeable amounts of the "wrong" blood.
no subject
I agree on that one!
There are probably similar issues in New Zealand, but the thing that is handy is that if you have a good bloodline, you'll generally be able to recite it back to the waka. And they can't take that away from you no matter how white you are. Kai Tahu, the local iwi where I live, has O'Regans and Solomons in its move-shake ranks, meaning some of the key figures in the iwi are pretty damn fair and blue eyed and thin-lipped. My cousin's husband is, he claims, something like 1/16 Maori (but I think he must be about 1/4 something else because he is the blackest Maori I ever saw. I mean, seriously. Her best friend is 1/4 and she is blonde and pale.
It must be hard though. My mother used to work with a woman with Grace Kelly looks who is extremely Maori and was raised on a marae. Her nana always called her "my pakeha mokopuna", probably affectionately, but she always felt like an outsider, even though she was as Maori as anybody else in the family.
no subject
::uses pretty API boy icon::
no subject
We have a treaty. Of course, our treaty meant very little in the early days. To my knowledge there has never been an official "whitening" policy that was quite so overt. We went for a policy of assimilation which focused on education in Whitey Ways, active punishment for speaking Maori, covert racism - and I have to say, probably an expectation that they would just die out at first. Our bad things have been a lot more subtle. On paper, we look like GODS compared to Australia.
Unlike the Australian white population, we early developed a sort of "Our Maoris" mentality which tended to trot the Maori out to be impressive in the realms of sport, war and entertainment. Eventually, and understandably, they got a bit sick of this. Especially because the people who were making money from the plastic tikis and teatowels were not them. This has changed *dramatically* since the 1970s.
I've just been checking the voting history, and that, too, in its way was quite "good". Theoretically Maori could vote in 1853, but only if they individually owned land - which hardly any did, because that's not how they do things. Europeans were glad because they were scared of an "uncivilised" government. Eventually, though, in 1867, the Maori electorates were formed and all adult Maori men could vote for (and stand for) those four seats. (Of course, the representation was quite minor, given the percentage of the population that was Maori.)
Part 2!
The truly key issue, though, was land ownership and, ironically, a fundamentally different understanding of what that meant. When a particular iwi granted Settler X a piece of land in return for some muskets, their intent wasn't ownership in perpetuity - rather, the right to use it. Of course, the Crown saw it differently and purchased vast tracts of land (and in some cases just stole), leaving Maori going "the hell"? Cue the Land Wars. Some Maori did OK. Most didn't.
And of course there was just straightout racism from Pakeha NZers, who considered themselves British till the 70s. Maori were dirty, lazy, etc. But very good singers. Over time, as NZ became more "gentrified" quite a few people who could get away with it hid their Maori ancestry. There was a lot of intermarriage at first. Still is actually. Disliked on both sides, by some people.
Maori had their own political movements, sometimes tied to religion, in the 19th century as well. There are also famous Maori NZers like Sir Apirana Ngata who was the first Maori to get a degree in NZ (read more about him here (http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/N/NgataSirApiranaTurupa/NgataSirApiranaTurupa/en).
But despite everything looking fairly jim-dandy on paper, the reality has been that Maori are overrepresented in lower socioeconomic groups, have worse health, smoke more, drink more, are in jail more, have higher infant mortality etc.
Re: Part 2!
But just because it's not perfect does not mean that it is equivalent to the Australian stolen generation scenario and I actually resent, mightily, the suggestion that I'm being "smug" (as your friend posted in her response to you).
NZ is not ideal but it *WAS* better, and is consistently working to be A LOT better. Just because I'm Pakeha doesn't mean I'm evil by default you know.
Re: Part 2!
Re: Part 2!
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Thanks.
no subject
no subject
(I just want to mention when I read fermer le bouche I thought, oh right! ferme ta gueule isn't really the polite way to say it.)
no subject
But I have to wonder where your story fits in, given that kind of structure. Can you be considered as part of an institutional force of oppression if your personal history and your current socio-political alignment belies the notion that you can even be said to belong to a "dominant" culture? And is it even productive to set up this either/or binary? (Sorry, all of the frustrations about this class are bubbling up right now). We're pretty allergic to notions of individuality and personal subjectivity in this Racial Formations class, which seems even more offensive given that the class is mainly composed of upper-class, (self-identified) white students. I've brought this issue up before but was shouted down by a few of the male PhD students, who argue that discussion of emotion/affect or individualism are so difficult to quantify that they aren't really worth bringing up in a critical-theory course. (The exact wording was, "What, do you want me to go cry on my girlfriend's shoulder about these issues? Because that's all you can do because you can't argue about them logically.")
no subject
no subject
Very interesting post.
no subject
no subject
Although I suppose "thank you" works, since this is not what I expected or considered from BARW, but it's exactly what I needed from it.
I had to work up the courage to say so, though.
(Also, is the home or cell the one with the 205 area code? Because that's the one I've been calling.)
no subject
I am commenting to ask you if it is okay for me to make a post in
Cheers!