Voices of reason

A group of Stanford faculty got together and released this set of ten principles for using/discussing racial and ethnic categories:

Statement 1: We believe that there is no scientific basis for any claim that the pattern of human genetic variation supports hierarchically organized categories of race and ethnicity

Statement 2: We recognize that individuals of two different geographically defined human populations are more likely to differ at any given site in the genome than are two individuals of the same geographically defined population

Statement 3: We urge those who use genetic information to reconstruct an individual's geographic ancestry to present results within the broader context of an individual's overall ancestry

Statement 4: We recognize that racial and ethnic categories are created and maintained within sociopolitical contexts and have shifted in meaning over time

Statement 5: We caution against making the naive leap to a genetic explanation for group differences in complex traits, especially for human behavioral traits such as IQ scores, tendency towards violence, and degree of athleticism

Statement 6: We encourage all researchers who use racial or ethnic categories to describe how individual samples are assigned category labels, to explain why samples with such labels were included in the study, and to state whether the racial or ethnic categories are research variables

Statement 7: We discourage the use of race as a proxy for biological similarity and support efforts to minimize the use of the categories of race and ethnicity in clinical medicine, maintaining focus on the individual rather than the group

Statement 8: We encourage the funding of interdisciplinary study of human genetic variation that includes a broad range of experts in the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences

Statement 9: We urge researchers, those working in media, and others engaged in the translation of research results to collaborate on efforts to avoid overstatement of the contribution of genetic variation to phenotypic variation

Statement 10: We recommend that the teaching of genetics include historical and social scientific information on past uses of science to promote racism as well as the potential impact of future policies; we encourage increased funding for the development of such teaching materials and programs for secondary and undergraduate education

Any of the scientists in the crowd wanna chime in?

I suspect that, to the degree which it's acknowledged at all, this will be dismissed as an intrusion of politics into science (like it wasn't there already) - I don't expect these sorts of things to stop any time soon.

Fantasy and Science Fiction Bingo, No Racism in Fiction Edition

Mandolin over at Alas, a Blog presents a bingo card for discussions of racism in fantasy/SF.

Typical.

Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech is brilliant. If you haven't already, watch it or read the transcript. As Pam Spaulding puts it,

In Obama’s speech I was reading the words of a man that gets it, regardless of the fact that he is a candidate for President of the United States of America that resonate with me on this issue. That he is this close to becoming president of this country — and to risk it all by cracking open this door on a painful area of this country — is something I thought I would never see. He is giving voice to a healthier view on race relations that needs to be embraced from a stage where it’s hard to argue that it is not an issue worth tackling.

Of course, a call to have an open, sincere national dialogue about race is totally ignored by the pundits, in favor of scandal-sniffing. "Did he sufficiently distance himself from Wright?" "Did he contradict himself about not having attended controversial sermons?" "Did he throw his grandmother to the wolves under the bus?"

And now the latest "gaffe" being pounced on is his clarification about the mention of his grandmother in the speech:

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity, but that she is a typical white person. If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know - there's a reaction in her that's been bred into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it. What makes me optimistic is you see each generation feeling less like that. And that's pretty powerful stuff.

The typical response I hear from the folks who want to pounce on Obama for this statement is "What if someone (Clinton, McCain, Joe Whitebread) talked about a 'typical black person'?"

What if they did?

Here, I'll even go ahead and make such a statement, so it's not just a hypothetical:

A typical black person in America harbors anger and resentment at white society because he or she has been on the receiving end of racism throughout his or her life. I think that comes pretty close to the tone of Obama's statement - though of course, nowhere near as eloquent, which is one of the reasons he's a serious candidate for President of the United States and I'm just a guy with a Z-list blog.

Was I stereotyping? Was I racist? Perhaps. The black experience is not my own; I'm just repeating my understanding of the situation, learned secondhand. You can make the argument that it's not my place to speak for black people, and that my role as a white person at this point in the discussion is to shut up and stay out of the way, or to use the privilege I have to help people who know what they're talking about get heard. Even if I don't completely agree, that would at least be a productive discussion (one that we as a nation aren't currently having).

Would Clinton or McCain be attacked for making a statement like the one above? Probably. There are partisans on all sides who use whatever disreputable tactics are at hand. Clinton gets attacked with sexism. McCain gets attacked with ageism. This sort of thing should be regarded as uncalled for, as beyond the pale, but it never is. Maybe it's a human tendency to overlook the faults of our allies and exaggerate those of our enemies. Maybe it's a belief that the ends justify the means. Maybe, to quote The Simpsons, "some people are just jerks."

But I'll risk being accused of some more stereotyping and say this: a lot of the people who are complaining about the potential blowback for talking about a "typical black person" are not talking about a statement anything like what I said above. Some have just internalized the idea that *any* talk about members of a race as a group is going to be racist (which, though an easy fix, is a privilege that's far more available to white people) and they're resentful that they have to police their behavior in a way Obama apparently isn't.

But I suspect others are talking about the typical ways of talking about typical black people. They're talking about Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray (the latter of whom is on record as favoring Obama's speech, incidentally) discussing black people's intelligence in The Bell Curve. They're talking about Jimmy the Greek going on TV and theorizing about black people's athletic ability. They're talking about Darryl Gates defending his policemen in Los Angeles by claiming that "blacks might be more likely to die from chokeholds because their arteries do not open as fast as they do on 'normal people.'" They're talking about bigotry, and they're complaining that they'll get called bigoted if they're open about it.

As well they should.

As Jon Stewart said of Obama's speech, "at 11:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race, as though they were adults." Isn't it time we started acting like it?

We are not your fetish: race and relationships

A post over at Jezebel stirred up a lot of comments at Feministing and Pandagon on the subject of racial fetishization (specifically, fetishizing Asian women) in relationships.

I've been on both sides of this. My first girlfriend was Chinese-American, and we got a lot of flack from everyone - her folks, who we had to keep the relationship hidden from because I wasn't Chinese; other Asian-Americans who assumed I was a fetishist, and I was very defensive. On the other hand, lots of white folks also assumed I was a fetishist, and when they thought they'd found a kindred spirit they said all sorts of horribly racist things.

I do think there's a difference between a fetish and a preference. I think people wearing glasses are attractive; even if I jokingly refer to it as a "glasses fetish" it's more of a preference. I'm aware here that I'm using the term "fetish" in a particular way, and it is commonly used in other ways as well, most notably as denoting exclusivity rather than inclusivity; that is, any trait that you absolutely require in order to be attracted to someone is a fetish.

With respect to race, it gets complicated (as it always does) because there are direct physical preferences, and there are trends, and there are stereotypes. Saying "I think fair skin and dark hair is attractive" is a preference. Saying "I like Asian women because they have fair skin and dark hair" is a trend. Saying "I like Asian women because they're demure and ladylike" is a stereotype.

All of these kinds of posts bring out the defensive types. The typical argument they make is "I'm not racist for having a physical type!" But as tps12 pointed out on the feministing thread:

These of course are considered attractive traits in our society in either sex, so without even having to check whether they actually are more common among Asians, the larger claim is pretty well falsified by the fact that you see way more white guy/Asian girl couples than white girl/Asian guy.

Of course, that whole gender disparity opens a whole other can of worms that I'm both unwilling and unqualified to comment upon. Though I will say that Daniel Dae Kim and Sendhil Ramamurthy (and, at least among my friends, Grant Imahara and Masi Oka) seem to be doing rather well at changing some of those perceptions.

What happens next is typically that the defensive folks acknowledge racial fetishization, but claim that their personal exclusivity is different, more noble somehow. Usually it's "I like the culture" (when it's not a rant about how feminism has "ruined Western women"). The idea is apparently that it's okay not to treat someone as a person if you think highly of the abstraction you reduce them to, or if that abstraction's not physical or sexual.

Personally, I find fair skin and dark hair attractive, the reverse (i.e., hair that's lighter than the person's skin) not so much. It's by no means the overriding factor in my dating decisions, but it's definitely a preference. I can trace some of it back to growing up in Southern California and having bad experiences with folks with blonde hair and suntanned skin, and later moving to New England and fitting in with geeks, but I'd be in denial if I didn't acknowledge that at least part of the preference is based in cultural concepts of whiteness and beauty.

So what do we do about this? Our best. Seriously, I think that trying (or more likely pretending) to adopt a Colbertian "I don't see color" doesn't work, but that doesn't mean we don't have some responsibility to try to do right by people. Personally, if the only things attracting you to your potential partner are traits shared by large groups, I feel you could probably do better (at the very least, someone who has all those traits plus individual ones that appeal to you), but if you're insistent on remaining within your "type" at the very least I'd say you have a responsibility to make sure your potential partner is on the same page, and is okay with your motivations.

Not only that, but examining exclusive preferences can improve your own life. A hell of a lot of the things we decide are mandatory in a partner aren't things that make us happy, but instead are things we insist on for stupid reasons like "I want someone my peers will acknowledge as attractive." Eliminate those, and you only increase your chances of finding someone with the traits that are really important. (Whether the important traits are "a gentle spirit" or "a nice ass" is an exercise left to the reader.)