DMac wrote: ↑Tue Jul 16, 2019 2:24 am
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 9:30 pm
old salt wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 5:31 pm
HooDat wrote: ↑Mon Jul 15, 2019 5:29 pm
I can't believe are having a discussion about Kamala's "blackness"
But, what I do think puts off some people is a sense that she is opportunistic about claiming various aggrieved status bona fides.... My understanding is that she chose to be sworn in as an Indian-American, not a black, congress-woman? Those kinds of
calculations strike hollow with many folks.
It will become an issue when she proposes her plan for reparations.
I just looked it up and all the contemporaneous news stories noted that she was the first black woman Senator from California and the first Senator of East Indian descent. Exactly accurate.
It blows my mind that many white folks think this is something to actually criticize rather than to celebrate.
No one is criticizing anyone's color or ethnicity, just finding it a little confusing.
Coincidentally I caught this gal being interviewed tonight, in the interview she described herself as a person of color.
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/nNa8Xxs.png)
I can't find that interview, but if you click on this one at 1:18 you can hear her describe her color (might want to close your eyes so as to not have any preconcived ideas of what it might be before listening):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVNYj4R2G2o
My English-French, brunette, brown eyed wife had a more brown/olive skin tone than this gal. Guess the new person of color is anyone who doesn't look like Anna Kournakova.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mQJaXwGPlg
So, not sure what you find 'confusing' here DMac.
"Queer, brown, female."
Hispanic folks often use 'brown' as a shorthand, ala 'black' for African American descendants, all being 'people of color', especially as perceived by the dominant white culture, all representative of various 'diversity' in contrast to the majority. Folks have decided to proudly 'own' their heritage rather than be cowed by the majority culture as somehow deficient.
You keep suggesting that folks who are relatively light skinned are somehow not worthy of claiming their actual heritage?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Saracho
I don't think anyone would be confused on meeting her that she has an hispanic background, or as she'd gender neutral call it: Latinx.
And it's undoubtable that being identified as such caused her to experience significant discrimination and sense of alienation at times. Tremendously talented and accomplished earlier in her career in stage playwriting, she got her first opportunity in TV through a 'diversity' program in which she came to realize that she was the only hispanic in the building other than the janitors...
BTW, Vida is a terrific show. Pretty racy, but certainly quite powerful and moving.
Not for nothing, but has your wife done a genetic Ancestry.com test?
She may well find some significant Mediterranean or Central Asian roots.
My wife too has brown hair and eyes, with mostly all Irish and English ancestors, "Murphy" and "Salthouse", but no one would mistake her for hispanic or African or Asian. Nor her red haired blue eyed sister, who despite those coloration differences is visibly a close relative.
Of course, as our family trees get more and more mixed, such distinctions may eventually become pretty moot. Of course, the only reason they matter today is the discrimination that is experienced by those not of whatever majority identity is in power.
But that's unlikely to remove human beings' animal instinct to find community, safety and security in numbers, the identity of the 'tribe'. We'll likely find other ways to see 'difference' and to perceive danger in the defined 'Other'.