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Scattered thoughts about Whiteness
Aug. 10th, 2007 01:17 pmYes, it's still International Blog Against Racism Week. :-) Check out ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
ibarw for info and links.
"White" is, of course, a race too. It can be educational for White people like me to turn and look back at ourselves - to see our invisible Whiteness.
My ancestry is British and my language is English. Now, here in Australia, people sometimes incorrectly use "Australian" to mean "White"; but I call myself Anglo, which is short for Anglo-Celt-Franco-Norman-Frisian-Jute-Saxon. :-) My ethnic group, like my language, are fantastic mongrels, vigorous hybrids of genes and words.
My red hair must make me look uber-Anglo, because bus drivers, little old ladies, White supremacists, etc, apparently feel comfortable bitching to me about Asian immigrants or Will Smith being cast in the Wild Wild West movie. You have to have your snappy comeback(s) ready ahead of time, because the sheer gall of it always catches you off-balance. The simplest thing is probably to say: "What did you say?" And then move pointedly away.
I've been racking my brains to see if I could think of any times I've been the subject of someone else's racism. The only instance I could come up with which even would even vaguely count were the girls in junior high who would cry, "Tally ho!" at me in bizarre "English" accents. I doubt they could've found Australia on a map. Mind you, I do have a "cultivated" Australian accent. In fact I once wrote a Lemniskate column about that - I think I'll paste the text in here in case my old Yahoo! group ever vanishes. :-) ( Talking the Talk, October 2000 )
ETA: I just looked up the genetics behind freckles. Turns out they're linked to mutations in the "red hair gene" that makes the receptor for the "tanning hormone" MSH (see my earlier posting). Hence the association between red hair, sunburn, and freckles.
ibarw for info and links."White" is, of course, a race too. It can be educational for White people like me to turn and look back at ourselves - to see our invisible Whiteness.
My ancestry is British and my language is English. Now, here in Australia, people sometimes incorrectly use "Australian" to mean "White"; but I call myself Anglo, which is short for Anglo-Celt-Franco-Norman-Frisian-Jute-Saxon. :-) My ethnic group, like my language, are fantastic mongrels, vigorous hybrids of genes and words.
My red hair must make me look uber-Anglo, because bus drivers, little old ladies, White supremacists, etc, apparently feel comfortable bitching to me about Asian immigrants or Will Smith being cast in the Wild Wild West movie. You have to have your snappy comeback(s) ready ahead of time, because the sheer gall of it always catches you off-balance. The simplest thing is probably to say: "What did you say?" And then move pointedly away.
I've been racking my brains to see if I could think of any times I've been the subject of someone else's racism. The only instance I could come up with which even would even vaguely count were the girls in junior high who would cry, "Tally ho!" at me in bizarre "English" accents. I doubt they could've found Australia on a map. Mind you, I do have a "cultivated" Australian accent. In fact I once wrote a Lemniskate column about that - I think I'll paste the text in here in case my old Yahoo! group ever vanishes. :-) ( Talking the Talk, October 2000 )
ETA: I just looked up the genetics behind freckles. Turns out they're linked to mutations in the "red hair gene" that makes the receptor for the "tanning hormone" MSH (see my earlier posting). Hence the association between red hair, sunburn, and freckles.
