I didn’t even consider the first one to exist and was briefly upset at George for saying people shouldn’t be proud/accepting of their base characteristics, but what you say makes sense of it for me.
A potentially mind-blowing thing that really drives this point home:
Obama is half-black and half-white (black father and white mother). He’s often and comfortably claimed to be the first black president, but never referred to as a white president, though he’s equally both.
Some races and ethnicities have historically been considered as subtractive, and this is the often unconsidered evil of ethnic or cultural allegiance.
This is because the American slave owners wanted to be able to sell their own children.
After raping a slave, if she got pregnant they could free their child or keep them as a slave.
Thomas Jefferson’s concubine, Sally Hemmings, was probably 3/4 white, and at least 1/2 white. Her granddaughter created a scandal when she ‘passed’ for white.
If an american tries to call themselves Native because they are 1/32 Native, people laugh at them. But up until a few years ago, being 1/64 Black made you Black.
Logically it still made sense, IMO. If he’s half black and half white, while all previous presidents were only white, then the black part is the discriminating factor one could highlight as a success to deviate from the previous norm.
If you wanted to highlight this deviation without leaning in on the black part, you would have had to use something like “not fully white”, which would have been explicitly subtractive and therefore much worse.
Of course one could simply ignore the skin color completely, but I also see empowering in highlighting this shift of breaking an otherwise strict all white run.
I didn’t even consider the first one to exist and was briefly upset at George for saying people shouldn’t be proud/accepting of their base characteristics, but what you say makes sense of it for me.
A potentially mind-blowing thing that really drives this point home:
Obama is half-black and half-white (black father and white mother). He’s often and comfortably claimed to be the first black president, but never referred to as a white president, though he’s equally both.
Some races and ethnicities have historically been considered as subtractive, and this is the often unconsidered evil of ethnic or cultural allegiance.
This is because the American slave owners wanted to be able to sell their own children.
After raping a slave, if she got pregnant they could free their child or keep them as a slave.
Thomas Jefferson’s concubine, Sally Hemmings, was probably 3/4 white, and at least 1/2 white. Her granddaughter created a scandal when she ‘passed’ for white.
If an american tries to call themselves Native because they are 1/32 Native, people laugh at them. But up until a few years ago, being 1/64 Black made you Black.
Logically it still made sense, IMO. If he’s half black and half white, while all previous presidents were only white, then the black part is the discriminating factor one could highlight as a success to deviate from the previous norm.
If you wanted to highlight this deviation without leaning in on the black part, you would have had to use something like “not fully white”, which would have been explicitly subtractive and therefore much worse.
Of course one could simply ignore the skin color completely, but I also see empowering in highlighting this shift of breaking an otherwise strict all white run.