You are not at all alone in your quest to be classified as “non-white”. The world owes a lot to the Persians for advances in human civilization…
Two points:
You contend that Trump increased racial awareness. I would argue that that all started in spades under Obama. There was great hope when Obama was elected. The country had a feeling (or hope) that we were finally past racial awareness and tension. But, Obama worked diligently to sow racial division under the guise of equity. He constantly reminded people that our differences were skin color deep and caused by others. He was all pretty words and racially divisive policies.
Second, the current societal paradigm where whites are openly regarded as 2nd class citizens (as your piece ably points out) is only serving to slowly racialize whites - what I mean is that we are moving towards a time where an offense against a single white will be viewed as an offense against all whites. Shouting down white supremacy is a vain attempt to stop white racialization. It may slow it, but that will only deepen the overall anger. We are on a very dangerous and dark path. We absolutely need to get off it and stop with colorizing people…
The question is: Is America still a melting pot? I fear it is not. It has dissolved into a land of tribes where physical and political power will be what’s used to sort out conflict. I fear hard times lie ahead..
This is complete and utter nonsense. Obama did everything he could to properly manage racial tensions in this country. Being President during the rise of social media didn't help. But the racial division you speak of was largely a reaction to his Presidency, not a product of it.
Firstly, when you are President, "pretty words" are half the job - most of it, in fact, if you're talking about shepherding culture. Obama was elected precisely because he was anything but divisive with his words - he spoke sympathetically to the concerns of white Americans while being willing to criticize black Americans where he felt appropriate. (And by the way, I hope the statement "our differences were skin color deep" isn't from an actual quote, because if so you've misunderstood it - that's supposed to mean that skin color is irrelevant.)
Yes, there was a great deal of hope when Obama was elected. But, (John McCain's admirable integrity notwithstanding) it was no thanks to the American political right (and a few jackasses on the fringe left as well). From early on in his candidacy, Obama was dogged by claims that he wasn't American and was actually a Kenya-born Muslim. (Claims which Trump shamelessly resurrected four years later.) A short clip of a pastor at his church complaining about racism was used to try and paint him as some sort of a bigot. The American right basically tried to turn him into the second coming of Louis Farrakhan.
And it didn't stop once he got elected. Who could forget Glen Beck's insane ramblings on Fox News about how Obama (a biracial man raised by his white mother) "hated white people" and wanted to put conservatives in camps? Or the fist bump between he and Michelle being called a "terrorist fist jab"? Or the way his political opponents just *loved* saying his middle name?
I will echo Wayne Karol's request for evidence of "racially divisive policies" or that he "worked diligently to sow racial divisions". I'm going to be blunt: I doubt you can name any such policies that didn't involve simply representing a relatively mainstream progressive viewpoint (such as affirmative action), or "sowing of divisions" beyond anodyne statements of sympathy for black shooting victims. Feel free to surprise me.
I notice that you don't give any evidence to back up your claim that President Obama was racially divisive. Have you got any? Because not only did the President Obama I remember do nothing of the sort, he was criticized for being too cautious on race.
I doubt he can. As you and I both know, the Barack Obama he's referencing is largely a figment of the colorful (yet colorblind!) imagination of the American right.
As the Army eye doctor said to Bugs Bunny: uh, yeah. But let's not forget that at the same time the Right was smearing Obama as a black supremacist Marxist America-hater, the Left was despising him precisely for not being a black supremacist Marxist America-hater. The fact that Obama doesn't see the world in a polarized, Pure Good versus Pure Evil way (which, after all, is exactly what made him such a change from Bush) made him an incomprehensible monster to both extremes, convinced them both that the problem was that they hadn't been extreme enough. And here we are.
This is beyond true. My daughter just added back Shirazi which our Persian family (Partow Shirazi) dropped decades ago. She also changed the spelling of her first name to sound more Middle Eastern. She was TOLD to do it to improve her job prospects. So Leah Partow became Layah Shirazi.
This country has lost its mind. If we don’t end this tribal madness soon, we are in for very dark times ahead
Have a co-worker whose parents fled Armenia who changed their bio, etc. and now demands to referred to as “middle eastern”. They are as light skinned as any northern Scandinavian. And yet this person who was born in the USA, educated at elite schools now demands the benefits of the “victim class” in order to get ahead.
I’m not sure how liberal white mothers who support this race-based hustle can look their own children in the eye (particularly their sons). These boys can’t even count on their own mother for respect. It’s sad.
I am white and appreciate the disadvantages it has given me more and more as whites are looked more and more unfavorably upon. It has become striking to me how so many groups hold whites in contempt-especially white males of which I am one, the liberal white educated being the most pronounced of these groups. I was not clear on this until Obama and more so since Trump. I never really thought of myself as white until Obama (Context-love Obama, despise Trump) but since Obama have gone from feeling ashamed, to resentful, to stubbornly proud of my whiteness. This is a transition for me as I grew up among Mexicans and was a want-to-be Mexican for most of my life. I am fairly well read (no degree, some college), open to new ideas and concepts, own a company with two women and a minority (I never thought of him as a minority but he does and the women do in my company)and what I listen/watch/read is left leaning mostly. The point I am trying to get to is, if I am tribbing up, what are those folks doing who are not well read or open to new ideas and concepts doing? Thank you kindly for the piece Shay!
Inane, indeed. But important to recall sad history. When Irish arrived, it was seriously argued that Celts were racially different from Saxons: impulsive, musical, imaginative but incapable of logical reasoning.
Sound familiar? Kind writers, like Matthew Arnold in Britain, accepted this essentialism but saw benign complementarity: Celtic merriment could and did leaven the Saxon loaf. Others including at least one prominent Abolitionist argued that Irish lacked self-discipline required to serve as police officers and thus City of Boston should not hire them
Of course, people are shaped by cultures in which they are brought up but time is long, long past when individuality must be recognized and valued
There is some evidence that the languages Europeans speak (including, of course, English) were brought to Europe by invaders from (roughly) Persia. The claim is that horse-mounted invaders did not genetically replace the native Europeans, but they did conquer them, and impose their language(s). This may have happened 4-5 thousand years ago. Basque may be a remnant of the languages spoken by Europeans before the invasion. There is some evidence that I may have Basque ancestors.
Shay, I very much appreciate your perspective on this (as well as much of what you write for the Bulwark). I largely agree, and it makes me proud to see such healthy viewpoints from new Americans.
You might find this surprising since your initial exposure to America was through George W Bush and the Republican Party, but not all that long ago the idea that race was a fiction was a largely mainstream viewpoint on the American left.
Sadly, even in America, founded as we are upon ideas, history leaves scars which can sometimes compromise the health of these sunny, philosophically ideal ways of thinking that once defined American liberalism. Because the black/white divide and the racist institutions that long undergirded them have played such a huge role in the shaping of so much of our history, we have difficulty viewing the various disparities and disadvantages (on average) still bedeviling black Americans through anything but a lens of shame and guilt. A large part of our cultural divide is defined by the way different segments of white America react to that guilt, and how we judge each other accordingly. The modern American left's embrace of race was largely due to a sense that American conservatives' professed color-blindness was an artful dodge of the need to address existing racial discrepancies. Sadly, the left flank of American progressivism has lost its way by seemingly abandoning color-blindness as an ideal altogether in favor of a racially-essentialist postmodernism.
Personally, I don't think guilt about our past provides a healthy framework for addressing the problems of the present. Nonetheless, it seems we will have a difficult time moving past race in this country until black/white disparities in income, crime, health, incarceration, etc. are minimized. The problem, however, is that there is no reason to expect that this will happen while we still consider race to be a principle defining factor of who we are. Because if race is important, then it matters - and when things matter, there are naturally differences. It's a bit of a tautological conundrum that requires gradual, mutually reinforcing progress on both fronts - racial equality and racial disinvestment.
Enjoyed the perspective.
You are not at all alone in your quest to be classified as “non-white”. The world owes a lot to the Persians for advances in human civilization…
Two points:
You contend that Trump increased racial awareness. I would argue that that all started in spades under Obama. There was great hope when Obama was elected. The country had a feeling (or hope) that we were finally past racial awareness and tension. But, Obama worked diligently to sow racial division under the guise of equity. He constantly reminded people that our differences were skin color deep and caused by others. He was all pretty words and racially divisive policies.
Second, the current societal paradigm where whites are openly regarded as 2nd class citizens (as your piece ably points out) is only serving to slowly racialize whites - what I mean is that we are moving towards a time where an offense against a single white will be viewed as an offense against all whites. Shouting down white supremacy is a vain attempt to stop white racialization. It may slow it, but that will only deepen the overall anger. We are on a very dangerous and dark path. We absolutely need to get off it and stop with colorizing people…
The question is: Is America still a melting pot? I fear it is not. It has dissolved into a land of tribes where physical and political power will be what’s used to sort out conflict. I fear hard times lie ahead..
This is complete and utter nonsense. Obama did everything he could to properly manage racial tensions in this country. Being President during the rise of social media didn't help. But the racial division you speak of was largely a reaction to his Presidency, not a product of it.
Firstly, when you are President, "pretty words" are half the job - most of it, in fact, if you're talking about shepherding culture. Obama was elected precisely because he was anything but divisive with his words - he spoke sympathetically to the concerns of white Americans while being willing to criticize black Americans where he felt appropriate. (And by the way, I hope the statement "our differences were skin color deep" isn't from an actual quote, because if so you've misunderstood it - that's supposed to mean that skin color is irrelevant.)
Yes, there was a great deal of hope when Obama was elected. But, (John McCain's admirable integrity notwithstanding) it was no thanks to the American political right (and a few jackasses on the fringe left as well). From early on in his candidacy, Obama was dogged by claims that he wasn't American and was actually a Kenya-born Muslim. (Claims which Trump shamelessly resurrected four years later.) A short clip of a pastor at his church complaining about racism was used to try and paint him as some sort of a bigot. The American right basically tried to turn him into the second coming of Louis Farrakhan.
And it didn't stop once he got elected. Who could forget Glen Beck's insane ramblings on Fox News about how Obama (a biracial man raised by his white mother) "hated white people" and wanted to put conservatives in camps? Or the fist bump between he and Michelle being called a "terrorist fist jab"? Or the way his political opponents just *loved* saying his middle name?
I will echo Wayne Karol's request for evidence of "racially divisive policies" or that he "worked diligently to sow racial divisions". I'm going to be blunt: I doubt you can name any such policies that didn't involve simply representing a relatively mainstream progressive viewpoint (such as affirmative action), or "sowing of divisions" beyond anodyne statements of sympathy for black shooting victims. Feel free to surprise me.
I notice that you don't give any evidence to back up your claim that President Obama was racially divisive. Have you got any? Because not only did the President Obama I remember do nothing of the sort, he was criticized for being too cautious on race.
I doubt he can. As you and I both know, the Barack Obama he's referencing is largely a figment of the colorful (yet colorblind!) imagination of the American right.
As the Army eye doctor said to Bugs Bunny: uh, yeah. But let's not forget that at the same time the Right was smearing Obama as a black supremacist Marxist America-hater, the Left was despising him precisely for not being a black supremacist Marxist America-hater. The fact that Obama doesn't see the world in a polarized, Pure Good versus Pure Evil way (which, after all, is exactly what made him such a change from Bush) made him an incomprehensible monster to both extremes, convinced them both that the problem was that they hadn't been extreme enough. And here we are.
This is beyond true. My daughter just added back Shirazi which our Persian family (Partow Shirazi) dropped decades ago. She also changed the spelling of her first name to sound more Middle Eastern. She was TOLD to do it to improve her job prospects. So Leah Partow became Layah Shirazi.
This country has lost its mind. If we don’t end this tribal madness soon, we are in for very dark times ahead
Have a co-worker whose parents fled Armenia who changed their bio, etc. and now demands to referred to as “middle eastern”. They are as light skinned as any northern Scandinavian. And yet this person who was born in the USA, educated at elite schools now demands the benefits of the “victim class” in order to get ahead.
I’m not sure how liberal white mothers who support this race-based hustle can look their own children in the eye (particularly their sons). These boys can’t even count on their own mother for respect. It’s sad.
I am white and appreciate the disadvantages it has given me more and more as whites are looked more and more unfavorably upon. It has become striking to me how so many groups hold whites in contempt-especially white males of which I am one, the liberal white educated being the most pronounced of these groups. I was not clear on this until Obama and more so since Trump. I never really thought of myself as white until Obama (Context-love Obama, despise Trump) but since Obama have gone from feeling ashamed, to resentful, to stubbornly proud of my whiteness. This is a transition for me as I grew up among Mexicans and was a want-to-be Mexican for most of my life. I am fairly well read (no degree, some college), open to new ideas and concepts, own a company with two women and a minority (I never thought of him as a minority but he does and the women do in my company)and what I listen/watch/read is left leaning mostly. The point I am trying to get to is, if I am tribbing up, what are those folks doing who are not well read or open to new ideas and concepts doing? Thank you kindly for the piece Shay!
You're right. I mis-read it. I am deleting my comment.
Inane, indeed. But important to recall sad history. When Irish arrived, it was seriously argued that Celts were racially different from Saxons: impulsive, musical, imaginative but incapable of logical reasoning.
Sound familiar? Kind writers, like Matthew Arnold in Britain, accepted this essentialism but saw benign complementarity: Celtic merriment could and did leaven the Saxon loaf. Others including at least one prominent Abolitionist argued that Irish lacked self-discipline required to serve as police officers and thus City of Boston should not hire them
Of course, people are shaped by cultures in which they are brought up but time is long, long past when individuality must be recognized and valued
Welcome to USA. We are lucky to have you!
Great piece, thanks Shay!
There is some evidence that the languages Europeans speak (including, of course, English) were brought to Europe by invaders from (roughly) Persia. The claim is that horse-mounted invaders did not genetically replace the native Europeans, but they did conquer them, and impose their language(s). This may have happened 4-5 thousand years ago. Basque may be a remnant of the languages spoken by Europeans before the invasion. There is some evidence that I may have Basque ancestors.
Shay, I very much appreciate your perspective on this (as well as much of what you write for the Bulwark). I largely agree, and it makes me proud to see such healthy viewpoints from new Americans.
You might find this surprising since your initial exposure to America was through George W Bush and the Republican Party, but not all that long ago the idea that race was a fiction was a largely mainstream viewpoint on the American left.
Sadly, even in America, founded as we are upon ideas, history leaves scars which can sometimes compromise the health of these sunny, philosophically ideal ways of thinking that once defined American liberalism. Because the black/white divide and the racist institutions that long undergirded them have played such a huge role in the shaping of so much of our history, we have difficulty viewing the various disparities and disadvantages (on average) still bedeviling black Americans through anything but a lens of shame and guilt. A large part of our cultural divide is defined by the way different segments of white America react to that guilt, and how we judge each other accordingly. The modern American left's embrace of race was largely due to a sense that American conservatives' professed color-blindness was an artful dodge of the need to address existing racial discrepancies. Sadly, the left flank of American progressivism has lost its way by seemingly abandoning color-blindness as an ideal altogether in favor of a racially-essentialist postmodernism.
Personally, I don't think guilt about our past provides a healthy framework for addressing the problems of the present. Nonetheless, it seems we will have a difficult time moving past race in this country until black/white disparities in income, crime, health, incarceration, etc. are minimized. The problem, however, is that there is no reason to expect that this will happen while we still consider race to be a principle defining factor of who we are. Because if race is important, then it matters - and when things matter, there are naturally differences. It's a bit of a tautological conundrum that requires gradual, mutually reinforcing progress on both fronts - racial equality and racial disinvestment.