On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 9:58 PM, John Sundman <j...@wetmachine.com> wrote:
> What's odd, depressing, and curiously interesting to me is that although > there are people in this country from all over the globe, Americans with > virtually every genetic marker borne by humans on earth, the "race > question" in the USA pretty much still revolves around "black" and > "white"'; that is, European and African. Really, it's as if people who came > from (or whose ancestors came from) India, North America, China, Japan, > Viet Nam, Laos, Mexico, Peru, Indonesia, etc, etc, etc don't even exist > when the subject of "Race in America" comes up. > > Yes - I see the same thing. I'm a standard-issue caucasian American (4 generations ago all of my ancestors came from County Cork, Ireland). My daughter is Chinese. When she was 5 we read to her the story of Rosa Parks and how she refused to give up her seat and move to the back of the bus. My daughter's question: if she was there - where on the bus could she sit? She's neither black nor white. We didn't know so we asked her kindergarten teacher (who is Chinese-American). Her teacher didn't know so she called up her father in New York. He said that no one knew - which made it too dangerous for the Chinese in the US to travel outside of major cities. Some people would classify you as white and others as black and all would treat you horribly if you didn't behave according to the role that they had assigned to you. So he just stayed in NYC for the 1950s. It's amazing (and depressing) that these rules existed (and still exist in mutated forms) but they are so undefined (well.. they are defined retroactively when transgressed). What a mess.
