Over the last several months I've been meeting regularly once a week with this woman - as far as I can tell, a very nice person, though I don't know her well - and we often make small talk to pass the time. Lately we've been talking about the Trayvon Martin case, because she happens to be Jewish and with a name like Zimmerman she was afraid (a) that the killer was Jewish, and (b) that there would be an anti-Semitic backlash because of it. What really has fascinated me is this comment she made, that George Zimmerman is hispanic and so he can't be racist toward a black teenager.
I found this interesting on several levels. First there's this idea that "hispanic" necessarily means non-white. Check out this picture of George Zimmerman:
( Read more... )If I saw a man of this skin tone walking down a Florida street, I would naturally assume he was caucasian. I'm German-American on my mum's side, Scotch-American on my dad's, and my face isn't far from that hue especially if I've been out in the sun. But more generally, of course, hispanic as non-European is a fairly recent thing. I remember learning in American history about the
caste system that cropped up in Latin history, ranging from Spanish-born
peninsulares, to the mestizos (Spanish/Native American) and mulattoes (Spanish/African), and of course the pure Native American, African, and other non-European group. The point being, what an American calls Hispanic would probably have some degree of European, Native American and African blood - not unlike their brethren on the other side of the Rio Grande, where the European stock was more likely to be from northern European, but European nonetheless.
The whole concept of "white" or caucasian is also troubling in and of itself. Once upon a time (and not so long ago!) Irish-Americans were seen as not as "white" as their English brethren. So were Italians, Greeks, and other people from southern rather than north-western Europe. And Jews; as late as the 60s, you couldn't get country club membership if you were Jewish. So this idea that white = European-descended (as if there was even a definite idea of what "European" meant!) doesn't jive with history. No, I think when people talk about someone being white, they have in mind a standard I read in an editorial a few weeks ago, I believe (though I could be wrong) by Leonard Pitts. He basically said that white meant being given the benefit of the doubt. If you're trying to jump-start a Corvette late at night, white means the cops are likely to assume you're the owner and having mechanical problems, rather than trying to steal it. And in a confrontation with a dead + unarmed teenager, white means the cops will be more likely to trust you that you really were under attack. In that sense, George Zimmerman definitely is "white," even if he's also Hispanic.
I also find it fascinating (and a bit disturbing) to see people arguing that ethnic minorities can't be racist. Of course Afro-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and all the rest can be racist. What if it had been Geraldo Rivera rather than Ann Coulter who had said in defense of Herman Cain, "Our blacks are better than their blacks" - would that have made it any less racist? Or if it was an Afro-American beat cop who, after being exposed to so many crimes committed by "urban youths" naturally assumed a young black man hotwiring a car was stealing it rather than trying to repair his own ride.
I was reminded all of this on reading
Toure's latest editorial on racism. The piece is well-done and balanced IMO; the comments are frustratingly myopic, and almost amusing in their assumption that a discussion of racism must be a discussion of
white racism. He does mention one white woman he met, and then he later gives the example of how Barack Obama's, Oprah Winfrey's, etc. popularity doesn't mean we're not racist - but the basic points apply to
all kinds of racism, and there's nothing in the piece that wouldn't condemn black hatred of whites as much as it would white hatred of blacks.
I wish I had something substantive to add to the conversation. I don't. The best I can do is take it all in with awareness, and try to avoid these same thought patterns in myself.
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