{"id":118,"date":"2011-08-24T23:28:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T23:28:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/?page_id=118"},"modified":"2026-03-19T16:17:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:17:22","slug":"race","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/articles\/intersections\/race\/","title":{"rendered":"The Race Issue, 1.0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jack Dawkins, 2008; significantly updated in 2024.<\/em><\/p>\n

We have a complicated relationship with our ethnic backgrounds: Afro-Caribbean, Western European, South Asian, Black American, and a little bit East Asian. Most people just see us as Black American, though. As a system, we are as diverse as our collective background: we are European, West Indian, Black American, Middle Eastern, East Asian, South Asian. Reducing ourselves to a Black American identity erases our complexity, and it is often difficult for us to talk about our background without omitting the details that make our life what it is. It\u2019s not that we hate our Black background. It\u2019s quite the opposite; we would not be ourselves if we did not see ourselves in the struggle of Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin, Kimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw, W. E. B. DuBois, and Harriet Tubman to fight for their humanity in a world that saw them as 3\/5 of a person. But we can\u2019t dismiss the rest of us either.<\/p>\n

We hate having our racial background reduced to the Black American experience when interacting in our singleton persona, but it’s especially offensive when people do that to us with the full awareness that we’re plural and have individual backgrounds. In October 2008, Hess had a conversation with a friend of ours (on whom we were emotionally and financially dependent, even) that turned out to be supremely racist. Hess mentioned our plans to legally change our name to a name of Irish background. We were too gobsmacked to respond\u2014at the time, we had internalised the racist idea of the one-drop rule and thought our Black American identity counted above all else, whether Indian or Irish or even Afro-Caribbean. They told us that the name might seem weird on a Black person because it’s Irish.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re allowed to choose whatever name we jolly well like, and Irish names are common enough in the English-speaking world to not be particularly unusual for people of any race. There are innumerable Black men called Sean, Shawn, Shaun, DaShawn, LaShaun. Many years ago, we knew a Black woman called Siobh\u00e1n, and there are others called Shavonne, which is just a respelling of the Irish name. But no matter. I burst into tears and was miserable for days. I\u2019m English with an Irish mother. Yet again, someone couldn\u2019t see past our skin colour, and it was especially painful to see it come from someone we held in such high regard.<\/p>\n

Hess was also upset, though it manifested as anger, rather than my sorrow: he asked her, “What would be better? Jamal or something?” They said no, but the damage had been done: we had fallen victim to racial stereotyping and pigeonholing. We are not, and will not be, limited to stereotypical names like Jamal or Latisha (even though those names are Arabic and Latin\u2014Latisha<\/em> is merely a respelling of Letitia<\/em> or Laetitia<\/em>, Latin for \u201chappiness”).<\/p>\n

This friend also showed concern that all the photos we used to represent ourselves were of white people. Most of this was because we couldn\u2019t find good stock photos to represent us well, so we went for pictures that gave a vague impression. I\u2019m the one who does most of the art here, and at the time my skills weren\u2019t up to the task. Just as we with the comment about the \u201cweird” Irish name, we were horrified that our skin colour overrode any other consideration. I don\u2019t think this friend even saw us as separate people, just aspects of a nonexistent “real one.” (Also, to paraphrase Mean Girls<\/em>, you don\u2019t just go around asking people why they\u2019re white, Karen.) We felt as though we weren\u2019t allowed to have any kind of individuality whatsoever.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, this friend did apologise to us later on. But we are still more than a little angry about the amount of racism we have encountered, even from people who profess to care about us and our welfare. We aren\u2019t the only system whose members\u2019 ethnic backgrounds don\u2019t exactly match their front body\u2019s. The majority of systems we\u2019re friends with also<\/em> have racially diverse members.<\/p>\n

It’s all right for systems to ally themselves closely with their external ethnic background, but it’s also fine not to do so. As long as stereotyping and bigotry are avoided, there is no right or wrong way to express subjective cultural backgrounds within a system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jack Dawkins, 2008; significantly updated in 2024. We have a complicated relationship with our ethnic backgrounds: Afro-Caribbean, Western European, South Asian, Black American, and a little bit East Asian. Most people just see us as Black American, though. As a system, we are as diverse as our collective background: we are European, West Indian, Black […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1228,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"coauthors":[12],"class_list":{"0":"post-118","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1711,"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/118\/revisions\/1711"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.exunoplures.org\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}