Sauntering Vaguely Downward

I’ll never understand the pride people take in saying, “I was born and bred here” or the use of the same phrase to defend one’s perceived superiority or deservingness of housing, health care or other basic human rights.

I mean, what did you, yourself, actually do to influence where you were born or bred? Unless you were a particularly ambitious embryo, the answer is “nothing”. Sure, your parents might have made some kind of effort to select your place of birth. Maybe they strove to move to better housing in a neighbourhood with better services and schools. Maybe they’re even immigrants, like my dad, and they struggled long and hard to learn their fourth language in order to integrate into their adopted country. But you? You didn’t do anything. Why are you so proud of that? Think of the things you've accomplished in your life. Isn't it far more fitting and fulfilling to be proud of those?

And why the obsession with asserting the superiority of a single identity over the others? “I’m English first and then British.” Pro-tip: Most of the rest of the world considers both of those to be synonymous with “ex-colonialist imperialist arsehole” so it doesn’t really matter which one you choose. ^.^

Here is a list of the geographically-linked identities that I consider myself able to lay claim to. I’m proud of some and not others.

• American
  
• British
  
• European
  
• Hawai’ian
  
• Filipino
  
• Olympian
  
• Seattleite
  
• Angeleno
  
• San Diegan
  
• Londoner
  
• Brummie (this is a new one; still feels a little odd)

Today, I think I’m proudest of being European. I earned that identity and that passport, and I’m still very pissed off that some people want to take it away.

Today is also, weirdly, simultaneously:

• the anniversary of Brexit, aka the Colossal Waste of Time and Money Foisted Upon Us by a Generation That Tore Down Decades of Painstakingly Won Goodwill with Our Neighbours and Won’t Live to Experience the Disastrous Consequences, Thanks a Lot, Dickheads.
  
  And
  
  
• International Women in Engineering Day

So, to close this post, here is a peaceful photo of a woman doing some engineering.

This Eastercon business has got me thinking about race and the perception of it. One more post on the topic and then I promise it's back to photography, kitties and anecdotes for a while.

I've gotten so used to passing for white among unobservant people that it's still a bit of a shock to me to think of myself as a Person of Colour. I would even go so far as to say I feel awkward labeling myself as such in public, even though it's true and I identify (mostly inside my head) as one. In fact, I suspect a good many of my friends would probably feel uncomfortable if I started making it more obvious that I don't consider myself white. I have spent my entire life teaching myself to behave in a manner that makes people fail to notice that I'm a PoC. This is probably why I got really into the industrial scene as a teenager and into being a geek as an adult, as these are subcultures with carefully defined parameters that are relatively easy to follow if you pay attention. I'm so good at "playing white" that often people who are of the same racial extraction as I am (southeast Asian) sometimes don't even see it.

The social system that exists for middle-class people in America and Britain rewards silence - and humour - on the subject of race, especially when it comes from someone who is visibly a Person of Colour. It does not reward serious attempts to engage people on the subject of racial stereotyping. For instance, upon telling someone that my father is Asian, I have heard many variations on the following responses:

"You must have had a really strict upbringing."
"No wonder you're so good at science/maths."

I have learned through experimentation over the years that the following are acceptable replies.

"Yes I did." [This is a lie.]
"Nah, he only locked me in the shed for three hours a day. I was lucky! Most kids got six!" [This is also a lie.]
"Actually, I'm just a genius." [Said in a joking manner that makes it blindingly obvious this is Lie Number Three.]
"Oh, I always liked counting." [Actually, this one is true.]

What is not an acceptable response:

"Please can you not make assumptions about my parents and my abilities based on racial stereotypes?"

That'll put people right off their canapés. It might even cause them to walk away if I were to allow my anger to show. So I've learnt to keep quiet, to deflect the tension these remarks cause inside me away from myself - and away from the people who've inflicted it, because it makes life easier. Sadly, it doesn't make life better, for me or for other POCs. I would love to stop. It's difficult to figure out how to do that without earning the labels "confrontational" and "aggressive". That may not sound like much of a cross to bear, but in cultures that thrive on keeping everyone in the conversation comfortable (and when you're female, in which case this becomes a double burden), it could cost a person a lot.

The lesson for Eastercon is, I think, that if there are PoCs in attendance and they are minorities, they may be the type, like me, that have conditioned themselves so well that they can't bring themselves to be critical, even if they do hear racist remarks. I certainly wouldn't be at all comfortable doing so in a feedback session that consisted of a room full of white people. It may take an ally - say, someone like foxfinial - to point it out for them. It may also be that such people are only willing to make remarks from a degree of removal, say, in a written survey or in the comfort zone of a blog post in a sympathetic community. (Hi, sympathetic community! I love you.)

Last Thursday, I watched Part 2 of 3 episodes on the history of mixed race people in Britain. Behind the cut are the notes I wrote while watching it. (Notes and conclusion from episode 1 can be viewed here.)

( Mixed Race Britannia: 2 of 3 )

This series has been building up to a “total integration these days” perspective on the status of mixed race people over the decades in Britain. I’m a little skeptical about it. I agree that socioeconomic class and immigration status seem to matter more than race here generally, but I think it’s disingenuous to gloss over or avoid some of the more repugnant bits of history so that an upbeat perspective can be maintained. The series failed to mention, for instance, the deportation of thousands of illegitimate mixed-race babies to the US post-WWII, which since it had anti-miscegenation laws could have been supposed to be an even less supportive environment than the UK at the time.

Last night I watched Part 1 of 3 episodes on the history of mixed race people in Britain. Behind the cut are the notes I wrote while watching it.

( Mixed Race Britannia: 1 of 3 )

I have long wondered why Britain, especially in the cities, seemed to be better racially integrated than a lot of the US. Britain is still majority white, while the US is much more diverse. From this programme I inferred that, at least in the early twentieth century, it was because the first group of persons of colour to arrive in Britain were pretty much all male, and their numbers tiny in comparison to the overall population. When they decided to settle, they had to integrate. The only ladies around for them to date/have sexy tiems with/marry were white girls. So the second generation were pretty much immediately mixed-race, and immersed into both cultures directly through their family. Since the proportion of persons of colour was small enough to be fairly non-threatening, integration was a good deal smoother than in countries where communities were larger and already organised into families. Those tended to stay segregated for longer.

Algerian man in restaurant: You look Algerian, actually.
Me: No no. I'm half southeast Asian.
AM: You're sure you aren't part Algerian?
Me: Yes.
AM, looking disbelievingly at me: Hm...I'll have to get you tell my fortune later.
Me: ?!

You could replace "Algerian" in that story with just about any nationality or ethnic group on Earth and I will have experienced it previously. Okay, you couldn't replace the part about the fortune-telling. Are mixed-race people renowned for their psychic powers? If so, how come no one told me earlier? I could have made my fortune as Madame Nanila by now. Curses.

Here are the groups to which people have not only insisted I must belong, but gotten upset with me to some degree for not belonging to them, over the years.

• Moroccan
  
• Thai
  
• Jewish
  
• Spanish
  
• Vietnamese
  
• Samoan
  
• Indonesian
  
• Indian
  
• Japanese
  
• Mexican
  
• Italian
  
• Cuban
  
• Unmixed white

I don't mind being difficult to pigeonhole. I do mind, however, when people get peeved because I don't fit into the preconceived identity box they made for me. How on Earth is that offensive?