Race, my 2 cents

We have touched on this a bit but I'd like to throw out my view.

Being "white" ( whatever the heck that means), is about number 8 down the list of how I would describe myself. I do care about my ansestry (I am into geneology) but, that is more of a case of trying to appreciate the sacrifice of those who made it possible for me to live in this wonderful country.

I think the dialouge on race gets tripped up because folks prioritize it differently in describing themselves.

For example, because I am probably Catholic in identity above anything else, I don't put keeping latin immigrants out of the country as a big priority. I mean, I certainly believe that illegal immigration should be halted and that we as a country need to decide how many legal immigrants we really want and stick to that goal. I'm not indifferent to the issue, or the problems it creates. But I also don't see it as an Anglo who feels threatened by waves of Latinos. I see it as a Catholic who wants to treat Catholic immigrants (and others) humanely while preserving the law.

Another problem I feel like we run into with race talk is that we as a culture have tended to downplay the power of ideas, so we look for materialist causes for everything. If someone comes uneducated out of 12 years of public ed, we don't look at the emphasis his culture places on education, or the kind of educational role models he might imitate, or the like. We assume that the schools are underfunded, or that there's racism behind bad test scores. That is, we use race as a blind to avoid addressing the real problems.

in repsonse to your Berwolf thread. I have since read the link you posted, thank you.

Wow, what a complex topic. A couple of things, what Chrisitanity brought to the World was a Faith that did not depend on race. I would suppose if you wanted to maintain culture, race or ethnicity as your number one defining characteristic, Christianity would get in the way of that.

My first reaciton to your post prior to reading the article was, "You would get the same reaction if Tommy Lee Jones" played the lead in the MLK story. That thought was expressed in the article.

Did you notice the term "the Way" used in the article.

It is interesting how the Austrua crowd tries to throw a net over all the folks of Europe. The Germanic Tribes were fairly distinct from the Celts, and the native Britons were distinct from them. It reminds me of how some throw a net over all "Latinos" in order to create a power base.

I can't write off economics and racism completely, because the fact is that in many places white flight is real, and class, marked by race, is an issue: economically powerful parents often vote for less money for schools, while pouring in money to their local district. At one local public school around here, parents all make a "donation" of about $2K, every year. It becomes easy, when your kids are now attending your superfunded, quasi-private local school, to say that money doesn't matter. But of course, if it didn't, you wouldn't be rasing so much money for your underfunded school, now would you? So within a single school district, you can get widely varying levels of school quality, and sadly, these also often break down along race lines, at least here in Los Angeles. Home values are instrinsically tied up with school quality, they rise and fall together.

This isn't to downplay the importance of home life or cultural emphasis on education; one of my brothers-in-law, who teaches in the inner city, has a lot to say about that. But teacher retention and quality is a real problem, as well, in poorer, majority-minority, communities. My husband used to do subbing in a district where teachers were able to disappear, essentially, for weeks at a time. The kids were playing cards in the back of the room--no lesson plans left for them, nothing. So often really great kids, who are working hard, whose families value education but don't have much money, are grossly underserved. They come to college and I can see a huge gap between what they've been given and what another kid from a wealthier background has been given. This isn't to say that all inner city, minority schools are terrible; one of my students from South Central would get really peeved when people would assume she didn't have as great of an education as someone from the 'burbs. But the truth was, in some ways, she didn't--her school was fine, but it wasn't superfunded for all the extras, which make a difference when applying to colleges and getting ahead in secondary education.

about the term "Latino" as analogous to what the Asatruar are trying to do with white folks. It is really about gaining political power on the assumption that there's some kind of shared worldview. it's an ironing out of complexity: I , for example, while white, am of Irish descent, and my ancestors would roll over in their graves if I claimed some kind of affinity with "Englishness." Not that I hate England, I don't. But I think I'll refrain from basing my identity on an alliance with whiteness, thanks.