Rachel Dolezal was a white woman who felt she was black, and, using various cosmetics and hairstyles, successfully passed for black. She in fact became head of the NAACP in Spokane, Washington before in 2015 she was outed as white by her white parents. She was summarily fired not only by the NAACP, but by the university in Washington where she was teaching and by the Spokane City Council, where she was a police ombudsman. And she was vilified and demonized.
I don’t understand why, if race is a social construct (Native Americans have claimed that Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test was irrelevant to her claim to be Cherokee, which supposedly has nothing to do with genes), and if gender is a social construct, one can justifiably claim to be a male in a woman’s body (or vice versa) but not to be a black person in a white person’s body.
In fact, when feminist philosopher Rebecca Tuvel published an article in the journal Hypatia that asked this very question about “transracialism”, she was demonized and exorcised, with some of the journal’s editors apologizing for the article, and many academics calling Tuvel a racist and a transphobe, demanding that the article be retracted (it wasn’t).
The question still remains, at least to me, a valid one. I really think that Dolezal felt she was black with the same honesty and intensity that some transgender people feel that their gender identity doesn’t match their bodies. And, as of a year ago, the Delaware school board was weighing a policy that let students self identify as to not just gender, but to “race”.
Now the controversy has bubbled up again. Congressman Ed Case, who represents the Honolulu area in Congress (a district with an Asian-American majority), declared at an event feting Asian-American and Pacific Islander voters and members of Congress that he is “an Asian trapped in a white body.” You can read about it at HuffPo, which clearly finds his statement horrific. (Their article, by Asian Voices editor Kimberley Yam, begins with the words “Oh… oh, no.”) There are many other articles about Case’s supposed gaffee (e.g. here, here, and here).
Now Representative Case may not be trying to look Asian or pass for Asian, but his statement was meant to say that he feels as if he were Asian. From the article (there are a lot of articles about this):
Case spokesman Nestor Garcia said the congressman had been commenting “on what his Japanese-American wife sometimes says about him.” The Democrat, whose state boasts the largest percentage of Asian-Americans in the U.S., told HuffPost in a statement that he has “absorbed and lives the values of our many cultures.”
Is this a big deal, then? Words like Case’s would in past times have been accepted as saying something informative about the man—something not pejorative.
No longer. You cannot make the claim—even in a state where the majority is Asian and that majority wields much of the political power, and Asians aren’t an oppressed minority—that you’re a white person who feels Asian. Somehow that claim is ideologically unacceptable, and seems to many to verge on racism. But why?
(One could argue that it’s political and patronizing, but Case said the claim comes from his Asian-American wife.) And so the dogpiling began on social media and in the public eye:
No, Ed. No. https://t.co/s73oJX7SKo
— Angry Asian Man (@angryasianman) January 16, 2019
I wonder if Tilda or Scarlett will play the Asian trapped in Ed Case’s body https://t.co/hoVLxbi41z
— Rekha Shankar (@rekhalshankar) January 16, 2019
"I'm an Asian trapped in a white body" 🤔 pic.twitter.com/MnXLTorn68
— Jun Naito (@thisjunnaito) January 16, 2019
WTF. As a haole who lived in Japan for 7 years and now lives in Hawaiʻi, I couldn't imagine saying something like this. Check your privilege Ed Case. https://t.co/7kLkFFGOGx
— 増給期成会 (@808socialist) January 16, 2019
And so on. . .
As the Washington Post reported:
It didn’t take long for Case’s comment to reach an audience online, as well, where the reception was a collective head shake.
“I just oof’d so hard I blacked out for a sec,” one Twitter user wrote.
“As a haole who lived in Japan for 7 years and now lives in Hawai’i, I couldn’t imagine saying something like this,” another said, using a Hawaiian term for someone who is a foreigner. “Check your privilege Ed Case.”
A CollegeHumor writer wondered whether Tilda Swinton or Scarlett Johansson would play the Asian trapped in Case’s body, a reference to the whitewashing scandals that ensued after the actresses were cast in the roles of Asian characters.
And Case apologized:
[Case] continued: “I regret if my specific remarks to the national API community on my full absorption of their concerns caused any offense.”
In the same email, Case spokesman Nestor Garcia clarified that the congressman was commenting “on what his Japanese-American wife sometimes says about him.” Garcia also noted that Case is a returning executive committee member of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus.
His full apology is here.
Truly, I don’t understand all the rancor about this. Is it racist to say something like this? Is he guilty of emotional cultural appropriation? Perhaps Asian readers can explain why this is offensive.
Now Case may not feel that he’s an ethnic Asian but rather a cultural one, but does that matter? (And indeed, there may be the white/Asian equivalent of Rachel Dolezal out there.)
Making a big stink about this, to my mind, accomplishes very little save allowing Asian-Americans to say that they have a 100% monopoly on “feeling Asian.” Does that eliminate bias against Asians, which is not that pervasive in America? What, exactly, does it accomplish?
And that is my problem with much of identity politics. It’s not that identifiable groups have no justifiable complaints about bigotry and oppression, or shouldn’t try to rectify this and obtain equal treatment and opportunity. No, what bothers me is that the way groups often go about this accomplishes nothing. (Remember the kimono fracas in Boston?) It’s a claim of ideological purity and not a way to achieve social progress. It is divisive rather than unifying.
Finally, Case made his statement in a spirit of goodwill and unity: what good does it to do hound and demonize the man? Does intent count for nothing?
Further, if you claim that ethnicity and gender are social constructs having nothing to do with biological reality but with personal feelngs, then you must be consistent, and you can have no valid reason to criticize what Case said—unless you think he was lying.
Feel free to correct me or explain this further in the comments, but, as always, please be civil.
___________
UPDATE:
Here’s an explanation from The Mary Sue. After reading it, I wasn’t sympathetic to their views: they’re hectoring a man for no good reason, flaunting their own ideological virtue, ignoring Case’s good intentions as well as the fact that Japanese people, especially in Hawaii, are not subject to “systematic racism and oppression”. This is language policing, pure and simple:
Here’s the thing: Case is not pulling a Rachel Dolezal here. He knows he is white, and he clearly has enthusiasm for Asian culture. But he’s going about it in a wildly insensitive and wrongheaded way. When a white person proclaims themselves to be a nonwhite race/ethnicity trapped inside a white body, they are discounting and dismissing the systemic racism and oppression that is inescapable for folks of that race or ethnicity.
It is peak white privilege, and it shares the same cultural voyeurism of straight women saying that they are “gay men on the inside.” These are marginalized communities that have suffered under discrimination and mistreatment since time immemorial, not a fashionable token to brag about how woke you are.
Race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, gender: these are not accessories to fit your mood: they are lived experiences and identities. If Ed Case really feels an affinity for Asian culture, he should know better than to insult it in this way. Fellow white people, it’s only January. Let’s be better than this, yes?
Transgendered people and the activists supporting them claim that it is physical/biological, that prenatal and neonatal conditions affect brain development and hard-wire the brain into a female or male position, which may not coincide with sexual assignment at birth. They call this “gender identity.” Not standalone “gender.”
This is considered separate from hormones … the person may or may not have a t/e hormone balance that conforms to either their sexual organs or their gender identity.
A person with no Mongoloid genes “feeling” they are “Asian”? It would be hard to demonstrate the locus of their claim in the the brain.
Yes, but if they really feel that way there must of course be SOME locus in the brain, because such a feeling must be biological (neurological). Just because you can’t locate it (and we can’t do that for gender, either) doesn’t mean that there’s no biological basis. And does demonstration of that biological basis mean anything given that all deeply felt things are based on brain wiring?
Exactly.
By asserting that trans gender ID is ‘biological’ while trans race ID is ‘just a feeling’, the regressive leftists display their gross ignorance of biology & brain science – specifically, a pre-enlightement division between corporeal brain and ethereal mind.
We know that the brains of Asians — raised in Asian cultures, at least — are arranged somewhat differently than westerners. This has been attributed in part to the use of pictogram writing.
We can assume that were a caucasian raised in an Asian culture, their brain might be ‘wired’ similarly. Per the prevailing SWJ view, would that person not be trans-asian?
I think you mean “ideogram” rather than “pictogram” – Chinese characters (and the characters in Japanese that are based on them) might have originated as pictograms but they bear a tenuous relationship to their origins.
But that would only account for people brought up reading and writing Chinese and Japanese. There are lots of other Asians who use non-ideogram writing systems. Are their brains supposed to be wired differently as well? (And does this wiring happen as literacy is acquired?)
“Are their brains supposed to be wired differently as well? (And does this wiring happen as literacy is acquired?)”
I think probably yes. (Not just Asians, everybody). I believe (that is, I have the impression from something I’ve read, I am *not* an expert!) that brain ‘wiring’ develops in the directions in which it is exercised. So if a particular language or system of writing favours a particular way of thought, I would expect those whose language it is to be ‘wired’ accordingly.
How different, though, I wouldn’t care to guess.
cr
Ideogram – thanks! I was searching for that word.
Asians who grew up using non-ideogram systems would thus be trans-caucasian. /s
“Logogram” is sometimes used, but there isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between word and character even in Chinese.
You do know that, for starters, “regressive leftists” are the crowd that basically throws LGBT people under the bus in order not to hurt the feelings of nonwhites/non-Westerners religious conservatives, right?
@Matt
“We can assume that were a caucasian raised in an Asian culture, their brain might be ‘wired’ similarly. Per the prevailing SWJ view, would that person not be trans-asian?”
That would describe me. A trans-Asian Aussie.
I’m of Scottish stock, but born in Japan and lived most of my 69 years in Asia. I’m married to a Chinese, speak and write Chinese.
I’ve often said “I feel Chinese”. Usually to some little amusement by Chinese as I’m 6’4”, round eyes and a very long nose (a “high nose” in Chinese). My little joke – which is also true – has never been taken amiss. It’s ratherbeen enjoyed. Appreciated even.
I empathise with Ed, and his critics are know-nothing scolds.
By the way – in response to below – Chinese (and Japanese) have *both* pictograms and ideograms. It’s why learning them is so charming.
And, FWIW, I find I can memorise poems and texts, and names, more easily in Chinese than English. Because of the pictographic element.
If Jerry reads this, he may recall we met here in Hong Kong a few years back, at the
Foreign Correspondents Club.
Peter Forsythe
I meant @James Walker, above.
(Re pictograms and ideograms).
Peter, thanks for sharing your illustrative personal example. Trans activists plant their flag on the hill of trans ID etiology being a person is born with a brain of the opposite sex*. Trans-racial ID can be rejected on the premise that race is a social construct. Even if it were to be shown that a person’s brain can become ‘asian’ or ‘black’ through environmental pressure, the trans activists will still claim special status as having been ‘born’ that way.
As Sam Harris cautions, arguing for equal rights, not on broad ethical grounds, but rather based on such rigid ‘scientific’ assumptions, can easily backfire if new discoveries in science disprove those assumptions.
* Which, btw, conflicts two other points of SJW dogma, that there are no ‘biological’ differences between male & female behavior, and that an infinite spectrum of genders/sexes exists.
Oh just stuff it. It should be obvious by now that the modern trans movement is pretty much led by a bunch of creepy straight men with a woman fetish or a crossdressing fetish they want to take full time so that they can yell at women and ask lesbians to suck their dicks.
The transactivist move movement is a male movement devoted to taking things away from women and harassing lesbians. Riley Dennis, a straight man who imagines he is a woman and a lesbian says lesbians are transphobic for not sucking his dick.
And in the atheist community, Muscato commanded lesbians to suck his dick on Twitter on International Women’s Day a couple of years ago.
The transactivist movement hates women, wants to rape lesbians, and is no way an oppress minority.
These are straight men, and in just a few years they have got everything they wanted.
You are talking about autogynephila–and a subset of those people. Not all MTF trans men fit that model and even AG males are not all abusive to women (although I grant you that a very nasty and noisy minority are like that.)
Blanchard, R. (1989). The concept of autogynephilia and the typology of male gender dysphoria. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.
(is a good place to start). I would also recommened Alice Dreger’s work
As autogynephilia is highly comorbid with narcissistic tendencies, it is perhaps inevitable that autogynephiles will be the ones who seek out and receive the most public attention.
This is unfortunate in two ways. The majority of trans people do not desire such attention or special treatment. Nor does their experience match that of the autogynephile, so advocacy and public policy modeled on the latter will prove a great disservice to the former.
I also heartily recommend Dreger and Blanchard: Find a free copy of Blanchard’s The Man Who Would Be Queen here:
http://docamitay.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/TMWWBQ.pdf
Of course, both researchers have been vilified — and even physically threatened — by the likes of the rabid Julia Serano. Even openly entertaining the possibility of the existence of autogynephia will earn you a barrage of invective — ironically by those who display strong signs of the phenomenon.
Oh just stuff it. It should be obvious by now that the modern trans movement is pretty much led by a bunch of creepy straight men with a woman fetish or a crossdressing fetish they want to take full time so that they can yell at women and ask lesbians to suck their dicks.
The transactivist move movement is a male movement devoted to taking things away from women and harassing lesbians. Riley Dennis, a straight man who imagines he is a woman and a lesbian says lesbians are transphobic for not sucking his dick.
And in the atheist community, Muscato commanded lesbians to suck his dick on Twitter on International Women’s Day a couple of years ago.
The transactivist movement hates women, wants to rape lesbians, and is no way an oppress minority.
These are straight men, and in just a few years they have got everything they wanted.
Then they’re an oppressed *majority*! I mean, they have to be “oppressed”, since they’re not White, obvs!
Except in cases where considering the “people of color” is inconvenient, like when discussing diversity in Silicon Valley/STEM. In those cases, they’re not counted as adding diversity; they’re transferred to the white pile.
When I got schooled on transgender, I was given links to science that claim to indeed show the physical locus of gender identity.
Stipulating your point that there is a locus for “feeling” X, but lacking a means of locating it physically, do we place all internal experience on an absolute level of equality?
What about the common experience reported by researchers that many humans go through a phase, or at least ardently wish or fantasize, to be the gender other than their gender identity, but it recedes? Is that equal to hard-wired transgender?
That’s speculative and the ‘science’ is inconclusive.
Supposedly, a large number of kids who are initially diagnosed as transgender turn out not to be. It seems that gender identity is hard-wired, but that it’s not really fixed until adulthood.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-soh-trans-feminism-anti-science-20170210-story.html
There is no such diagnosis as “transgender”. There is only the symptom of gender dysphoria, a general dissatisfaction with the social expectations associated with ones biological sex. This should not be regarded as a disease or sickness. It is common. It is not a mental illness.
What they now call gender identity disorder in children is simply non-conformity. The cure should to be to let these children live free and get over it. “Free to Be You and Me” as we said in the seventies.
And yes, not only do kids with gender issues usually get over them just fine, but they often grow up to be gay and lesbian. Medicalizing gender-role nonconformity, dosing kids with cancer chemotherapy agents that interrupt GnRH signaling between the hypothalamus and pituitary and then sterilizing them with cross-sex hormones is medical abuse. Transactivists, who are mostly straight male fetishists, euphemistically describe these powerful brain and body affecting chemotherapy agents as “puberty blockers”.
So what we have here in the transactivist movement is a bunch of middle aged and rich straight males who want to live their crossdressing fetish full time and to hide their creepiness are fostering the sexual nullification of children who would likely grow up to be lesbian or gay through the long term use of brain-altering cancer chemotherapy agents originally meant for short term use followed by hormone treatments and surgical alterations that almost completely eliminate the possibility of sexual pleasure.
This is CONVERSION THERAPY. Endorsed by liberals on behalf of conservative straight men like Caitlyn Jenner, Megan Stabler, and Jennifer Pritzker.
You know where else conservative straight men like to use drugs and surgery to sexually nullify children and adolescents who seemed they might be gay or lesbian?
IRAN.
How the hell did liberals come to almost fully endorse Iran’s “final solution” to the gay and lesbian problem at the behest of conservative straight male fetishists?
I always wondered what trangender identification does to sexual preference.
I mean, you could go bananas trying to figure out if a male sexually with or without homosexual drives claims to be trans, when they get hormones and/or surgery (or they don’t!), what happens to their sexual preference?
Male children like Jazz Jennings who had conservative parents who feared he might grow up to be gay made a reality show about how they socially transitioned him, gave him drugs for years which interfered with GnRH signaling between the hypothalamus and pituitary.
Conservative exploiters like the parents Jazz who have sexually nullified their child are fully supported by both “liberals” and many conservatives.
I think you over-state the case a tad (not that I think that what you say is all false–but its only part of the story). Its true that 80% of MTF gender dysphoric children transition to happy omosexual adults without intervention and its also true that people like Ken Zucker were unjustly villified for pointing this out.
It doesnt follow that all gender dysphoric people will turn out tha tway–nor that all are auto-gynephilic. Many MTF transfolk strat as highly feminised boys and are attracted to typcial females. They dont fit your pattern at all (nor do they fit the late onset gender dysphoric or AG men that you, err, eloquently if rather unkindly, describe)
Exactly. Why does a transgender person who desists automatically result in being homosexual?
For example:
born with male organs
attracted to women for sexual arousal
begins to experience dysphoria for his gender identity, but still is aroused by women.
Identifies as a trans woman …
Would still be aroused by women, right?
On desisting later, now with gender identity male, still attracted to women.
Is it correct that sexual preference is a separate track from gender identity?
Mmm, that’s not what the science says. But if you say so. 😉
This is complete bonkers.
cf. Dr. James Cantor’s compilation of twelve studies on trans ID retention among youth:
http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html
For someone who’s really hung up on the issue, you’re not very well informed on it. 😉
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/DIV44/APA-DIV44.8-05-03.Letter.html
Oh, I’m well aware that the transradicals hate Cantor (and I see he’s in good company there along with Buss and Pinker). But nothing at that link — Conway, no surprise — refutes the data of those twelve studies. Did you have anything of substance to offer?
The strong reaction is puzzling, since growing up with lots of exposure to a different race and culture will generally cause you to feel very much at home with that race and culture. Happens a lot, really, and it is well known. Black or Hispanic children raised in white families and in predominantly white school districts, for example. It just should not be a big deal.
I agree. The phrases “When in Rome” and “Gone native” spring to mind.
I would never make a remark like he did. But I know what he means.
We moved to Japan when I was a toddler. My Mom learned to cook there. We moved back to the US when I was in elementary school, but we lived and worked in Japan when my kids were little as well. My daughter is right now in her room watching some incomprehensible anime, while chatting online with her friends, who are a mix of Japanese and Chinese speakers.
We are of European descent, and now live in the Western US, but years of immersion in the culture over there have made deep impressions on every facet of our lives.
I think experiences like mine are much more common than they used to be.
I have a neighbor who is also a German-descended Colorado rancher, who spent most of his childhood in British boarding schools, and actually attended Eton College. He is more British than Prince Harry.
You just cannot put people into the expected boxes anymore. Maybe we never could.
My recollection is that Dolezal’s vilification was not universal, that there was some sympathy for her (or at least a sense of validation regarding her situation) among older black folk — the ones whose living memory goes back to when “passing” was a one-way street, used only by light-skinned “Negroes” (the comme il faut terminology in those days), since the societal benefits of passing were all to be had then on the white side of the color-line.
“The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson” comes to mind.
Indeed. The tragedy of Coleman Silk, the professor in Philip Roth’s campus novel sending up 1990s’ political correctness, The Human Stain, is another.
These people are getting tiresome.
It’s as if, once you touch the third rail, a crowd comes over to ensure you are properly grounded.
+1
Indeed, but everyone in the crowd has a different ground. The ensuing ground loops make more noise than the original signal.
The actual news story here is once again that Twitter reacted to something. I haven’t seen anything saying the audience at the event reacted that way.
Twitter is not actually a barometer of what regular people in the real world think.
A good point and one that needs to be made over and over.
+1
I only joined Twitter recently and it strikes me that most of the posts there are sloganeering, self-promotion/virtue-signalling and over-the-top outrage (or some combination of all three).
Depends on who you follow.
Very much so. I enjoy my Twitter feed because I mostly follow scientists and youtubers. Politics doesn’t come up often, and the same goes for arguments because of it.
-Ryan
What about ‘The Mary Sue’ don’t you get?
There is a difference. One can think a mechanism where for some reason the brain develops differently from the body and a person has different gender identity than the physical body. gender identity is largely biological though it of course has a social component.
Races are different, while biological race differences like skin color are obviously real and biologic, race becomes relevant only as a social context when one interacts with other races. Black men who have never seen a white man do not see themselves as black men. Since racial identity is purely social I cannot see any biologic mechanism that could cause one to be transracial. That doe snot mean one cannot empathize and feel belonging to a different race. One still is in no way that race.
In Japan where people are homogeneous, they have created a new way to divide people: blood types. People with type B blood are seems somehow suspicious or inferior. It can also be used as an excuse of one messes something up. could one be trans blood type? Obviously that would make no sense.
One may postulate such a mechanism, but neither has it been convincingly demonstrated, nor even a hypothetical workable process put forward.
While modern transgenderism is largely a fashion there is IMO enough proof that the phenomenon is in some cases real. The fact that we do not know the exact mechanism is irrelevant. I just shows how little we know. We cannot draw facts form out ignorance.
Let me clarify my statement:
IIRC, a couple of studies found in trans people differences in the size of a certain part of the brain; specifically, the size was midway between the sizes typical for males & females. This actually argues against the claim that a trans person possesses a brain [fully] of the opposite sex.
It is plausible that this brain abnormality is a causative factor in gender dysphoria. However, no evidence exists for a brain locus responsible for active gender identification in the other 99.7% of humans, or 100% of non-human animals, who are not gender dysphoric. No model has been put forth to explain the fitness value of such a function developing, much less positing when in our evolutionary past it arose.
Gender dysphoria seems to be real and might have a biological basis, but that doesn’t mean a man is a woman, nor even that transition to alleviate dysphoria should be a preferred treatment.
But none of this really matters much because the modern transactivist movement is largely led by men who just a few years ago would have been understood to be crossdressing fetishists.
And this quote from the Mary Sue takes the cake:
Gee, isn’t a big part of the trans movement a bunch of straight male creeps saying they are lesbians and that lesbians are transphobic for not having sex with them?
You should try to justify your claims rather than simply claiming them.
-Ryan
Look up Riley Dennis on YouTube. He posted a video called “Are Genital Preferences Transphobic?” in which he argued that being a lesbian who won’t suck his dick is a culturally conditioned prejudice and that lesbians can overcome their “transphobia” and suck men’s (female identified) dicks to prove they are not transphobes.
This is not a marginal opinion. The straight male led trans movement is really a bunch of porn-fed dudes who hate lesbians. They’ve taken over GLAAD! Riley Dennis is a straight man who got an award for saying lesbians aren’t real and that that they have to suck his dick because it’s a special “ladydick”.
I feel something coming up, I feel more and more like a black woman trapped in a white male’s body. Even my late wife told me I’m not really white. 🙂
Seriously, if transgender feelings should be respected, transracial ones -which are much less deeply steeped in biology, I’d think- should be accepted too, even more so if anything. Ms Tuvel is perfectly, 100% right.
More specifically, I gather from the case of Mr Case that it is not enough to sympathise and champion anymore, one needs to identify, and apparently that is not accepted, sad.
Two times sad: once because sympathising and championing is not enough, twice because not allowed to ‘identify’.
The lesson? How to create a perfect lose-lose situation.
I do not see the connection. The fact that transgenderism is based on biology is the sole reason to respect it. Sure we have IMO gone too far. Earlier there was a legal and medical procedure after which the person changed his or her gender. Now we say that just because someone identifies somehow we should act as he or she is of the different gender.
if someone has a belief that he or she is something he or she is not, race, age, nationality, profession etc. I do not get why we should give it any respect,.
Every feeling is based on biology. What kind of biology do we “respect” versus what kind do we “disrespect.” Dolezal may have really felt, deep in her bones, that she was a black person, in the same way that a transgender person their bodies are of a different sex than their minds.
Are you saying that you don’t believe her, or that such a thing is not possible at all? If it is, then you’re going to have to get specific about what kind of “biology” you mean here.
I doubt anyone around here loves R&B and soul food more than I do. (I’ve always had an affinity for black culture — and for Jewish culture and for several other ethnic cultures). But as a Slovenian-Irish hybrid, I’ve never had any confusion about being a white man, even if of a coupla untermenschen sub-varietals. 🙂
You evidently have multi-culture syndrome. I have a touch of it too. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Ken, I’m not really confused, but you knew that.
Your point is exactly that, why could we not love, sympathise and champion another culture? Why should we identify now? And if so (which I do not really see the need for), why aren’t we even allowed to do so? Purity, anyone?
As said, I think the Ctrl-left (yes, it mainly emanates from there) has created a lose-lose situation.
Egg-zactly (as the fellow students of Curtis’s daughter in comment #17 might put it). 🙂
The comment, coming from him or his wife seems silly, although not totally surprising in Hawaii. Hawaii is was it is, a really ethnically diverse population, a culture that expresses these differences. A kind of reverse bigotry does exist there as you could expect it would. I know this kind of comment does not play well to many who think bigotry and racism only applies to white but reality shows otherwise. After all, the power politics we see on display in the U.S. government and it’s history in racial results continues even today. All I am saying is our racial problems continue in this country for sure, but they also happen in other places on this earth and Hawaii is one of them.
Chrissake, magnanimity sure seems a trait in short supply these days (maybe it always has been), especially on the political extremes. I read Rep. Case’s statement that he is “an Asian trapped in a white body” as a semi-humorous stab at metaphor, merely an attempt to convey a sense of empathy toward his Asian-American constituents. Maladroit, it may have been, but mean-spirited it wasn’t (unlike so much of the criticism aimed his way as a result of his comment).
Exactly. Context and intent have somehow become completely irrelevant in evaluating whether someone is a “racist” or “racially insensitive.” Simply reacting has always been easier than thinking, which is why so many people opt for the former.
“… a semi-humorous stab …”
Therein lies the problem.
Humor/SJW = oil/water.
Exactly.
Politicians, SJWs…healthy skepticism applies.
In perpetuity, for all time, throughout the universe! Surely not. Discrimination arose in an historic, not prehistoric, period. This is just saying thay white people are immutably racist, which is itself racist.
Can’t anybody take a joke anymore?
My daughter is called an “egg” (yellow on the inside, white on the outside) by her Asian friends because she is the only white girl in Science Olympiad and one of the few in the orchestra.
I believe “Egg” is an offshoot of “Banana” (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) for Asians who have lost their Asian identity. I am not sure how common “egg” is.
There must be ‘Cadbury Eggs’ out there, too!
Your daughter is an egg?
I guess the yolk is on her lol
I hope she’s ova it.
She’s a shell of her former self.
Since Asia is a very large geographic entity encompassing many different ethnicities, the notion of ‘Asian culture’ or being ‘an Asian trapped in a white man’s body’ is rather vague. Can Mr Case or his critics point to any specific criteria which might support their claims?
The Mary Sue claims the inescapable experience of systematic racism and oppression as a defining feature, but how many of Hawai’i’s hyphenated Americans have actually experienced this? (That’s a genuine question.)
Jerry. In your introduction to the update there’s something missing from the sentence beginning ‘After reading it …’ which is scrambling my understanding of the second half.
I’ll look and fix the update. Thanks.
I took his original statement to be somewhat sympathetic to the possible lack of equality Asians have in his community.
What if he has said I am a white man and no Asian is trapped in my body? That actually sounds racists.
What if he had said: I am an Irish Setter trapped inside the body of a white man. Now he’s getting closer to how I feel sometimes.
Wouldn’t you just *love* to hear a politician invite these people to “Take your phony f**king outrage and shove it up your self-righteous f**king asses.”
My guess, it would be a political winner.
Probably get my vote.
I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. Unfortunately, one wannabe politician who seems to have managed to exploit that reaction is tRump.
cr
So much we should be offended by from Trump and his minions and so much wasted offense over the trivial! Is this how decency and civilization begin to fall away?
I never understand what you’re supposed to do when told to check yoçur privilege.
Are you supposed to look at it, the way you check a good looking person in the street ?
Are you supposed to part from it like when you check your luggage ?
Are you supposed to reprimand it ? Win against it at chess ? Not clear. And then what when you’re done.
I always thought they meant to check it at the door, much as a cowboy would check his guns at the door of the saloon in old westerns.
+ 1
Thank you.
So did I think of the expression “to check something at the door”, but there were other interpretations possible.
Paint it in a pattern of squares!?!?
Bump it with your hip so it gets out of the way. (Check in hockey.)
Just a note: the classes Dolezal taught were (according to Wikipedia) “‘The Black Woman’s Struggle’, ‘African and African American Art History’, ‘African History’, ‘African American Culture’, and ‘Intro to Africana Studies.'”
So, she wasn’t just fired for the controversy, but for pretending to be black and then teaching a bunch of courses based on that identity.
Yes, she was monetizing her invented identity.
I agree with Prof. Coyne that every feeling is based on biology, but I don’t think every feeling should be respected. Someone may feel like the British queen. And then may demand a palace.
At our university, finals are a hard time to deal with the feelings of some students that they are qualified for the study, despite a straight row of Fs.
Used to be, proclaiming oneself “Napoleon” was the fast track to the funny farm.
No more, perhaps.
Why do you hate Freddie Mercury?
I accept the claim that she really identified as black because of her upbringing. I recall a detail that she had white parents who adapted black children and her neighborhood was predominantly black.
But even a person who identifies as their own race could competently teach courses on the experiences of another race since much of teaching is based on using the writing and thoughts of other people anyway. Any of us could teach about ancient Greek philosophy without being Greek and without being dead for 2000 years.
Once, as an undergrad, I had a philosophy professor (taught the Stoics, I think) who I’m pretty sure hadn’t been dead for much more than a millennium, tops.
😀
I seem to remember my professor of ancient philosophy, Eric Lewis, calling himself an “ancient philosopher”. (I believe he was younger then than I am now, which is scary to think about.)
Now ya got me humming Dylan’s “My Back Pages” to myself. 🙂
“But even a person who identifies as their own race could competently teach courses on the experiences of another race since much of teaching is based on using the writing and thoughts of other people anyway. Any of us could teach about ancient Greek philosophy without being Greek and without being dead for 2000 years.”
I 100% agree! But I would be willing to bet money that both the administrators and most vocal students of that college didn’t, and thus Dolezal got the job because people thought she was black.
Paleontology should only be taught by dinosaurs. (Apologies to any plesiosaurs or pterosaurs who may read this.)
I’ve heard that birds identify as dinosaurs, so they might be acceptable…
Well, a lot of straight male fetishists like Caitlyn Jenner who has openly admitted he jacked off in his daughter’s panties have gotten on the cover of Vanity Fair.
Straight male woman fetish men like Cherno Biko who have gotten on the cover of National Geographic and also spoke at the Women’s March in Washington back after Trump’s inauguration even though he shortly before this he confirmed that he raped a woman (she identified as a man, didn’t stop him) in an attempt to create a queer POC super race.
Straight male fetishist Riley Dennis has made a video called “Are Genital Preferences Transphobic”. This straight male who imagines he is a lesbian by the assertion of his gender identity now goes on YouTube and harasses lesbians for not sucking his dick.
Riley is not a fringe element. Riley got an award last year from GLAAD for telling lesbians they suffered from culturally conditioned prejudice and that they should suck his dick to prove they are not transphobes.
Modern transactivism hates lesbians. They shut down Michfest because Fest wouldn’t admit straight male fetishist attend. Somehow organizations that used to represent the interests of lesbians determined that refusing to admit straight men with who imagined they wanted to become lesbians because of their porn addictions.
Transactivism from the liberal side has done more damage to gay and lesbian culture than conservatives have ever dreamed of.
Can you provide links for any of the claims made in your first three paragraphs?
Also, was this intended as a response to me? Regardless, I still want links. This is not the first time you’ve made several seemingly extremely exaggerated or fabricated statements and then failed to back them up.
Remember, you can’t post more than two links in a post without the auto-moderator blocking the post, so, if you have more than two, post them in separate comments.
Well, I wont waste a link on Riley Dennis. You can look up his video called “Are Genital Preferences Transphobic?”
This straight dude basically argues that lesbians gotta suck him or others like him off or else the are not real lesbians.
Well, I’ll let Gish Gallop straight male rapist speak for himself.
So, is your point that you’re using two or three people to represent an entire population? That seems to be what you’re saying.
The fallacy of hasty generalization is what logicians call that one, I think.
Bacopa, please lay off the graphic sexual language here; there’s no need to do that on this site. Make your point civilly and without explicit sexual images.
One allusion to fellatio per thread has always been my personal rule of, er, well, thumb.
You and I have definitely made a lot of sex jokes and engaged and quite a bit of innuendo, but I guess that’s a bit different from what Jerry is talking about.
At least, I hope so. I would hate to lose the fun we have with that 😛
So, is your point that you’re using two or three people to represent an entire population? That seems to be what you’re saying.
This straight man, Riley Dennis, has won an award from GLAAD for saying that being a lesbian is wrong and that lesbians need to validate the gender identities of men like him.
He is mainstream.
That’s why he won the award? Again, provide proof.
Still waiting…
I forgot to mention that Dolezal also faked hate crimes against her, the hate crimes in question being committed because she was supposedly black.
Really, since when do you have to have the right identity to teach a course in history or art or cultural studies?
Since administrators and very vocal activists decided it must be so.
As I have reported before, my little Nissan Versa car claims that it is really a Cadillac Escalade, trapped in the body of a Japanese subcompact. On weekends, on the other hand, it believes it is really a Jeep Cherokee.
Why? Because a “white” man said it. The kimonos? Because “white” women (among others) were wearing them. How dare those uppity whites take on the trappings of their betters in any form? They need to remember their place as the dalits of the NWO.
Yeah, gettin’ so, poor put-upon white folk can barely get by anymore. Hell, they’re barely clinging by the skin of their teeth to 82% of the board-of-directors’ seats of Fortune 500 companies. They don’t watch out, they might maybe could slip below holding 89% of the presidencies at private universities.
While I agree with your general sentiment, I think your measurements of white success are irrelevant to anyone who disagrees. Pointing to the positions of the top .00000001% doesn’t really speak to the experiences of the average person.
Fair enough, BJ. But I don’t think the .00000001% of the American population that comprises regressive leftists teaching humanities courses at elite universities speaks to the experiences of the average person, either.
They don’t, but they do speak to/talk to/teach students, and especially at the elite colleges, where all of our SCOTUS justices and (nearly) all Presidents come from, as well as many prominent politicians and other leaders. They have a power to shape culture and politics. This worries me.
True, and the .00000001% who hold the board of directors seats of the Fortune 500 companies control a vast amount of the nation’s wealth, and constitute the “donor class” that has an outsized influence on our nation’s politics.
If you’re gonna worry, BJ, worry about them, too.
I know Ken was joking with the number of zeroes in “.00000001%” but those having the regressive left worldview goes way beyond just college faculty and staff, which is a pretty large group anyway. Even some of my friends have it and we aren’t associated with a college.
Come on, Ken. You know I’m not worried about just one thing. In my real life, I talk far more about corporate overreach and the slow march of monopolization than about social justice warriors.
To paraphrase Mr. Brando in The Wild One:
“Hey, BJ, what are you worried about?”
“Whaddya got?”
🙂
That’s basically me in a nutshell. I’m worried about everything and eternally pessimistic.
On the other hand, there’s no time like now for pessimism! An embarrassment in the White House, increased polarization, increase in crazies on both sides…I could go on, but what’s the point? It’s all going to be terrible anyway.
Other point being, white folk across the spectrum in the US of A are still doing pretty good, relatively speaking — not as good as Donald Trump’s white-nationalist base fantasizes that they were doing in the Leave It to Beaver Fifties (when everybody’s dad wore a grey-flannel suit to work, and all their moms fixed dinner wearing a frilly apron over their dresses and sensible heels) — but pretty durn good, nonetheless.
That may be, Ken. I wouldn’t deny that – on average – (and that’s an average of a widely disparate population) whites probably have it better than blacks. There are plenty of incidents to demonstrate that, just as there are plenty of incidents to demonstrate people taking advantage of their ‘oppressed minority’ status.
But this ludicrous dog-piling on anyone who says a wrong word (whether supportive or critical) on gender or ethnicity, doesn’t help anybody, least of all the alleged victim class.
And picking on someone just because they’re white is BS.
(Don’t get me wrong – I’d call down a curse on assholes of *any* ethnicity or gender or whatever)
cr
I agree with you 100%, ii. What I’m saying is that it’s precisely the wrong reaction to any of this for white folk to start acting like they’re some poor, poor, pitiful aggrieved minority of their own.
Unfortunately, I think that’s just the logical endpoint of the oppression olympics.
I’m a bacteriologist with a degree from Lehigh. What you say if I said…
I emphasize with Dolezal, et al. Even after only three semesters at the other place, I still identify as a Leopard.
IMO Dolezal’s ‘sin’ was that she lied to her club members. If she had told them her feelings and situation, and they had accepted her, there would’ve been absolutely nothing wrong with her becoming president of her local NAACP.
So in this case, as long Case is honest with his voters, I don’t really care if they (a) accept him as asian and reelect him, (b) reject his claim but reelect him, (c) accept his claim and don’t reelect him, or (d) reject his claim and don’t reelect him.
I think the comparison with transgendered people is a bit different, for practical reasons. They suffer assaults at (IIRC) 10x the rate of other people when they come out. So they have a perfectly legitimate reason not to tell others that they’re trans. And frankly, their sex organs aren’t relevant to being an NAACP club president or representing asian americans. Perhaps arguably there could be a reason to come out if they were running for elected head of a group representing women (or men), but even then, I think the practical reality of bias and animus against trans people means that the strong expectation of ‘coming out’ we might have for people claiming a cross-racial identity does not really apply to their situation.
as everyone knows what
She resigned from the NAACP. I don’t know whether it was forced, but I do remember reading that, to the NAACP’s credit, she still had some support within the organization, as she was recognized as having done a good job as president.
FFS, Case didn’t even claim to feel Asian, it’s what his Japanese wife said about him. So freakin’ what? *All* the wankers who piled into him seriously need to get a life.
How many of them have eaten sushi when they’re not even Japanese?
cr
I identify as a very good looking and sexy person.
Please act accordingly.
I, as a billionaire…
We’re a match made in heaven.
I am a genius trapped in a mediocre brain!
I have that too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWWwM2wwMww
That is all.
Got my earworm of the day now, fer sure.
One *should be able to pick* ethnic associations. And ethnic groups should be accomplishment clubs, not biological lineages. I have said this in the context of native American rights, but it applies anywhere. Oddly, some have called for a political version for Japan – due to the low birthrate and very strict immigration (with “classes” of citizens?).
I have to say that reading the Rachel Dolezal article on Wikipedia I think that the issue is a lot less about racial identify and a lot more about personality disorder.
She lied about her background in ways unrelated to the racial issue, she committed fraud multiple times and assumes no responsibility for her behaviour.
I think the Case issue is completely different, personally.
And trump is a stupid orange pumpkin with very large brain trapped in a commander-in-chief’s body