For your consideration...

[madscience.livejournal.com]

Behold, the Poe-ing of queer theory:



Edit: should I restore deleted comments?

Comments

[jandian.livejournal.com]

Bullshit that came from Tumblr. People claiming to be "trans-ethnic" meaning they should actually be Japanese/"black"/ethnicity-of-your-choice.

I have no idea if they are serious and want to feel special, trolling or trying to discredit trans* issues.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

OK, with the caveat that this could easily be abused for so many reasons, especially the three you've mentioned, I can see it being a thing.

Firstly, we need to separate culture from race. But can we? Is race merely the colour of your skin? Or does it include some cultural understanding? I guess it, at the very least, has a sense of shared heritage. The thing that pops to mind here is the shared slave experience of the majority of African Americans. But then, Obama doesn't share that experience, but he shares many of the other experiences slave descended African Americans share; especially the racism.

However, on the flip side, I have some asian mates who were either born in Oz or came here young, and they drink beer, hoon around in cars and play football; all very stereotypical "Aussie" things to do, and they rightfully identify with that culture. On the flip side, I've taught white kids who have grown up with a lot of more "Asian" Asian kids in Australia and identify with that culture more (they're known as eggs, white on the outside, yellow on the inside). The interesting thing here is that the Asian kids will be Thai, or Viet Namese, or Burmese, but they'll all be identifying strongly with Japanese and Korean culture. Is it more legitimate for the Asian kids than the white kids because of their general appearance (Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Viets and Burmese look nothing alike, or at least, as alike as Swedes and Italians do)?

I feel the answer lies somewhere in the outsider being welcomed by the insider. In other words a white person couldn't call themselves "transnigger" without some general acceptance from some portion of the culture that can legitimately call themselves "nigger".

[madscience.livejournal.com]

You bring up a lot of interesting points. As I said in another comment... ethnicity is to race as sex is to gender. One is a biological fact, the other is socially constructed and a matter of perception.


"Is race merely the colour of your skin?"

Yes, when the perception is as shallow as it is in the US.


"Japanese, Koreans, Thais, Viets and Burmese look nothing alike, or at least, as alike as Swedes and Italians do"

You know how people who aren't familiar with a spoken language sometimes can't even hear its phonemes? I think there's an element of facial recognition analogous to a phoneme. Different Asian ethnicities look different to you because you're familiar with them, but people who aren't so familiar can't perceive the differences. On the other hand, I can perceive the ethnic background of a lot of white Europeans, but not so much Asians or blacks. After living in Arizona for two years, I'm only barely able to tell a Chicano from a Navajo without the help of obvious cues from their clothing.

Incidentally, Obama does have slave ancestry — ironically through his white mother.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

I always say all white people look alike :P Because whilst I am very good at picking where someone is from based on facial features, this doesn't translate into being able to differentiate people very well. The Chinese, Thai and Burmese kids in my class all look very different from the other nationalities, but almost identical to each other. I pretty much rely on haircuts to know who is who, so I don't like people who change their hair :P

I've heard the phoneme thing before, apparently Japanese can't differentiate Rs and Ls.

It's definitely helpful to separate race and ethnicity, thanks for bringing up that distinction.