Thursday, September 25, 2003
Melanin on the fall
In Michelle Myers's weekly "Hey, look, I'm black" column, she makes the following claims:
1. "The disturbing part is that race is a social construction with no biological constrictions..."
Whoa, somebody didn't pay attention in biology. Go compare estrogen levels with an asian woman. I hope she's not going to try to convince us that hormones don't affect our behavior.
2. "...social boxes and categories are an important tool of society's thought-controlling power."
Keep in mind that her position on prop 54 is to defend these boxes and categories.
3. I have to see race everyday because America's watchtower would prefer for me to forget my ethnic identity and subsequently my cultural history, and pass down this historical disconnection to generations after me. Thinking about the watchtower reminds me of my position in society and my inability to step outside of my perspective and personal experiences."
This description, if you read it, tells you a pretty obvious thing... she's holding on to her seperate cultural identity out of spite for this "tower." This is important, because it means that she's doing it because she wants to, not because she has to, as she claims all over the place. This thus means that she doesn't have great grounds for complaining about the problems of identifying with her black culture. That'd be like me complaining about the problems I face because I blog. ("Oh, but I had to blog, because the student culture would prefer me to forget my abberant assumptions about right and wrong...")
4. "I do not have... the luxury of ignoring how race is coincidentally correlated with various social issues."
Another problem that could be easily remedied with Prop 54.
5. "I cannot expect to effectively participate in American society in the future without knowing how my history affects my social position."
Do you know what my history is? Neither do I. My worries tend to be future-oriented. Yeah, maybe my parents came from whatever that country's called, and there was oppression or something, but it doesn't help me to pay attention to it. Instead, I worry about carving my own cultural niche out. Sure, it's made up of bits and pieces of the culture around me, and is heavily based on my "history," but it doesn't make that culture any less mine, nor does knowing about it's history mean anything at all.
Disclaimer: I am not black
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