Hello everyone,
I thought this was in interesting video and link about a former child actress Raven Symone were she does not want to be labeled as " African American" but instead of as just "American" I thought it would be a interesting video to watch and possibly discuss about because of the reaction that Oprah gives when Raven explains why she doesn't feel she should be considered "African American" in essence going back to the readings we have done and the discussion of the one drop rule.
As we could probably have expected since this comes from a "celebrity", I don't find Raven's position particularly well thought out. She claims that labels are bad...OK, in the sense that labeling people one thing or another can limit perceptions of who they are, I guess we can accept this. But it is certainly nothing new or interesting that we haven't heard from before. But the more important critique that I have is that she hasn't apparently considered the consequences of abandoning her identity as an African-American and claiming to be "non-racial" or "post-racial" (although she doesn't use these terms). What are the possible harms that can result from a naive acceptance of the "post-racial" claims for American society? What does this claim ignore?
ReplyDeleteThe claim to be "post-racial" ignores the fact that ours is a heavily racialized society. Can a person be a part of our society without having a racial identity? Can we have racial identity without racism? Will ending racism have to involve ending racial identity? Raven wants to be considered a person, not a person of a particular race, and while that would be great in a perfect world, in our world it just isn't possible. Maybe in the future racial identity won't be important, but for better or worse, it's important now.
ReplyDeleteThough she doesn't outwardly say she is trying to be "non-racial" or "post-racial," she does term it "colorless" and tries to stress that color should not matter because she is an American. The problem with having this view or attempting to have this view, in my opinion, goes back to the avoidance issue that we have already brought up several times in class discussions. Americans who claim not to see race or say that they don't really want to use labels aren't fixing any issues. Avoiding something or ignoring something never has positive outcomes, it can only keep things the same or make things worse ultimately. Race is something that has historically been so tied into the ideologies of America that avoiding it only brings more harm than good.
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