Thread Drift: Mutant "Blackness"

[Habis]

It still is a kind of erasure though, because it's using The One Drop Rule which is a US concept. His phenotype is a bit more ambiguous when filtered through a non US cultural lens, where many Blacks in US would not be considered Black in other countries because of skin tone, hair texture and nose shape.

Yep. As I said earlier, American culture tries to put everybody into like five boxes, and those boxes are based on White Anglo-saxon's perception of other people.

Up to the XVIII century people didn't think that race = skin color. When the Portuguese and Spaniards explored the world during the Age of Discovery they would say that people was "white" if they had very pale skin, "black" if they had very dark skin, and not mention their skin colour at all if they weren't either very pale or very dark, but they didn't equate color to race. When they described the Japanese, the Koreans and the Pekinese they said that they were "white".

That doesn't mean that they weren't racist. They were very racist, but a Spaniard or Italian dude didn't feel that he belonged to the same race as a Turk one just because they had a similar skin color. And social class often trumped race: Right after the conquest many Spanish aristocrats married Mexican and Inca princesses.

But in America (both Latin and North America) developed a culture were the descendants of European colonists, African slaves and Native Americans lived side by side, so it was possible to know your social position just looking at your face. People started to judge each other for their skin colour.

And when the Age of Colonialism started around the XVIII century (what happened before wasn't Colonialism, but Conquest and sometimes Genocide) the scholars in Europe tried to develop an ethical justification to the domination of other people.

Hence, they developed an ideology according to which there was a hierarchy of races (mostly Christoph Meiners and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, but many others supported them) with northen Europeans on top. And Johann Friedich Blumenbach labeled every race with a color tag: White (Europeans), Black (Africans), Brown (South-eastern Asians), Yellow (North-Eastern Asians) and Red (Native Americans). Adam and Eve were supposed to be White, and everything else were "degenerations". They called White people Caucasians because Blumanbach claimed that the Garden of Eden was around the Caucasus. Meiners claimed that people with darker skins weren not just naturally less virtuous, but also able to sustain more pain and punishment.

And done, they had the ideological justification for slavery and colonialism. And people were all put in nice color-tagged boxes.

But the Latino American people defy that perception of the world. Most of them are mixed, and rather than be just Black, White or Native American they run the whole spectrum in between. Latino people don't follow the "one drop" rule and while they have their own mental boxes to put people in, those boxes aren't the same as the North American version, and often they aren't the same from one Latino country to another.

The same goes for many people from North Africa, Middle East, India...etc., they don't identify themselves with the US racial boxes.

If you think about it, the "Other" label could be applied to at least half the world. Indians make a fifth of Humanity, and the several predominantly Musltim ethnicities (Arabs, Persians, Turks...etc.) make at leas anothe fith. Add Polynesians, Melanesians,...etc.

[Tracer Bullet]

And, therein lies the rub... Simply put, if you had to describe to law officials (anywhere on the planet - language isn't a barrier) a person of interest (I.e., a suspect) that you saw fleeing the scene of a crime but, all you could tell them for sure was his/her height, approximate weight, and skin color, what would you say?

Well naturally the answer would vary depending on what region of the world. A "light-skin Black" man in the US might be "Colored" in South Africa, Mulatto in Latin America,etc. And that same person might not see themselves as any of those things.

[Tracer Bullet]

Yep. As I said earlier, American culture tries to put everybody into like five boxes, and those boxes are based on White Anglo-saxon's perception of other people.

Up to the XVIII century people didn't think that race = skin color. When the Portuguese and Spaniards explored the world during the Age of Discovery they would say that people was "white" if they had very pale skin, "black" if they had very dark skin, and not mention their skin colour at all if they weren't either very pale or very dark, but they didn't equate color to race. When they described the Japanese, the Koreans and the Pekinese they said that they were "white".

That doesn't mean that they weren't racist. They were very racist, but a Spaniard or Italian dude didn't feel that he belonged to the same race as a Turk one just because they had a similar skin color. And social class often trumped race: Right after the conquest many Spanish aristocrats married Mexican and Inca princesses.

But in America (both Latin and North America) developed a culture were the descendants of European colonists, African slaves and Native Americans lived side by side, so it was possible to know your social position just looking at your face. People started to judge each other for their skin colour.

And when the Age of Colonialism started around the XVIII century (what happened before wasn't Colonialism, but Conquest and sometimes Genocide) the scholars in Europe tried to develop an ethical justification to the domination of other people.

Hence, they developed an ideology according to which there was a hierarchy of races (mostly Christoph Meiners and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, but many others supported them) with northen Europeans on top. And Johann Friedich Blumenbach labeled every race with a color tag: White (Europeans), Black (Africans), Brown (South-eastern Asians), Yellow (North-Eastern Asians) and Red (Native Americans). Adam and Eve were supposed to be White, and everything else were "degenerations". They called White people Caucasians because Blumanbach claimed that the Garden of Eden was around the Caucasus. Meiners claimed that people with darker skins weren not just naturally less virtuous, but also able to sustain more pain and punishment.

And done, they had the ideological justification for slavery and colonialism. And people were all put in nice color-tagged boxes.

But the Latino American people defy that perception of the world. Most of them are mixed, and rather than be just Black, White or Native American they run the whole spectrum in between. Latino people don't follow the "one drop" rule and while they have their own mental boxes to put people in, those boxes aren't the same as the North American version, and often they aren't the same from one Latino country to another.

The same goes for many people from North Africa, Middle East, India...etc., they don't identify themselves with the US racial boxes.

If you think about it, the "Other" label could be applied to at least half the world. Indians make a fifth of Humanity, and the several predominantly Musltim ethnicities (Arabs, Persians, Turks...etc.) make at leas anothe fith. Add Polynesians, Melanesians,...etc.

I think in certain circumstances some of the groups you cite in that Other label could identify as White and/or Caucasian.

And while Latino racial identity developed without the same stringent boundaries in the US, the push toward these permutations of multiracial identity were still encouraged by anti-Blackness and anti-indigenous ideology, to complicate matters. The push away from the simplistic color category was still based on the same racial hierarchy where Whiteness was privileged and Black and indigenous people were at the bottom, so Latinos aren't necessarily more evolved for having looser reins on racial identity. Having prominent African features still carries a stigma. And there certainly are standards for what qualifies as Black in Latin America(having some mixed heritage doesn't necessarily exclude you from Blackness when emphasis is on features, since not everyone will"look mixed". The Garifuna for example) it's just on a different scale than the US.

But yeah, race as we're familiar with it today didn't really take shape until after slavery and the scientific racism that sprung out trying to justify it. And who qualifies as White has shifted over the years as well.

[BroHomo]

Well naturally the answer would vary depending on what region of the world. A "light-skin Black" man in the US might be "Colored" in South Africa, Mulatto in Latin America,etc. And that same person might not see themselves as any of those things.

Yeah when I went to London, I was surprised that many didn't even consider me Black, or African-American. My skin, hair,nose, were too "white" Which made it difficult to navigate the perilous world that is gaydom. Many of my potential British beaus were disappointed that I wasn't dark skinned, etc.

[Anthony Shaw]

You can say the same thing about most black people in America (or people people who are in their locations/regions specifically because slavery brought their ancestors there). I am also Brazilian and I am black.

Also, as noted, Brazil has the largest population of black people in South America; about 52% of the pop in Brazil classify themselves as either black or a black mix.

Well......okay.

[Anthony Shaw]

I think there's probably more weight to the idea that there seems to be a reluctance to deal racial or ethnic issues directly using Storm. She's a black woman living in America and she's been raised in Africa, there's all kinds stories that can grow from that, but I can only think of a small handful of the top of my head that were in the main X-title. It's sorta touched on in her solo

I completely agree with you that writers have missed a boat load of opportunities to tell such stories with Storm.

[Anthony Shaw]

But to totally deny his blackness, which I think the movie, and comics are doing is fucking stupid. My grandfather was FOB Irish, my grandmother was straight cree, with some African ancestry, My dad identifies as white. as do my half brothers, I on the other hand couldnt. i am not only black, but to flat out ignore it is not something I would ever do.
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I think more thought has gone into Namor being bi-racial than......surface-dwelling & more practical bi-racial characters.

[Anthony Shaw]

http://www.comicvine.com/ashake/4005-42895/




Nah. The white hair/blue eyes is because her family from her mother's side is able to weild magic. I think Kitty mistook her ancestor Ashake for Storm (she was a powerful sorceress) at one point.

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Oshtur, the source of their power appears as a white haired woman sometimes also.

I do recall that information, but it never stuck with me. I always thought that was a silly way to explain her appearance. Most of the iconic x-women have unusual hair, and no explanations were needed to explain why. I thought it was cool that their were degrees of physical mutation. Logan has weird hair, and he is a male. But hey, it is canon.

[Tenebrae]

I've been away on holiday so only seeing this thread now but yeah, it's closed.