A fund specifically for white males

@Quad

So this explains why there is this thing with Halle Berry. I remember when she won the academy award and her mother being interviewed after the fact made the comment of how she was "a credit to her race" and I couldn't help thinking 'What race?' They're of the same bloody race. Its her bloody biological daughter. I find it inconceivable that you would consider your own flesh and blood as somehow of a 'different race' but then again I guess its possible to think in that way based on skin color alone. But its almost an insult to caucasians if you think about it, I mean what it infers is that white blood is fragile and blood of other races so strong that it can override caucasian blood.

Your explanation sheds light on this opinion piece article:

ost folks argue that racial remix makes the child biracial. And technically, because Halle considers herself ‘black,’ it does.

But Halle considers her child ‘black,’ too. And man, has that ruffled some folks’ highfalutin feathers. All that hype aside, her decision to pare down her baby’s biracial background doesn’t make her a racist -- it makes her a realist.

By giving her daughter a strong identity in her black self, Halle is prepping Nahla for the real world when people are going to want to know "what she is," when they’re going to make stupid, off-base comments to her, assume things about her based solely and specifically on her race...

Gabriel insists his daughter is white. Whether that’s true or not is something only they and people in their inner circle honestly know

http://thestir.cafemom.com/big_kid/116927/halle_berry_racial_identity_what

I would have said 'bullocks neither Halle or her child are 'black' but bi-racial but it looks like society really doesn't acknowledge 'shades of grey'.

 

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I guess it does seem a bit screwy from that perspective, but then these cases only come up when you marry (or anyway, breed) across racial lines. This would never happen in cases where both parents were unambiguously white (or black, or whatever).

In my own case, I'm white but my wife is not (not even anywhere close to it), so there's essentially no chance that any of our (future) children will be able to pass as white. So I kind of got over the idea that a child's race must necessarily match their parents' races a long time ago.

That's one way to take it. But then, often such fragile things are considered valuable - a purebred dog or horse, to take an obvious example, or a water supply untarnished by dirt or pollution. Though it is worth noting that an element of insecurity is present in the supremacist conceptions, and this is part of what makes such so dangerous and violent. Confident supremacists can be paradoxically magnanimous.

Yeah, people who identify as "bi-racial" tend to be really, really sensitive and insecure about stuff like this. This is because nobody really respects their chosen identity - they just get uncritically treated as "black," mostly. So they've built up this whole complex about trying to shame people into identifying as "bi-racial" and generally waging a cultural battle over the question. Except it's stupid - it's unwinnable to begin with, and what America needs is not the resurrection of the "mulatto" category, so much as to stop sorting and judging people by race so much in the first place.

Also note that there's considerable push-back against such "bi-racial" identification from black people. I.e., they recognize the attempt to carve out a distinct identity, and resent the implied racism. I.e., the preference for a "half-white" identity over a "black" one seems to deny that "black" already includes such mixtures to begin with, and to accept that it's preferable to be "as white as possible."

All of which is pretty obviously based directly on her own experiences as a comparably-mixed black woman to begin with.

Well, if we accept that it ultimately comes down to what the child looks like, mostly, then we can indeed say. From the few pictures I've seen, it's kinda hard to judge - it'll probably depend on how her hair and facial features develop as she matures. She is in the ambiguous zone, though (it's not at all implausible that, were the daughter to grow up and reproduce with a white man, their children would come out unambiguously "white").

Right. In a different society that accounted race in a different way, they might well not be black. I'm told that Brazil works on something like the inverse of the American one-drop rule (i.e., anyone not definitively black is by default "white"), so maybe down there the whole situation would be very different.

 

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@Quad

"what America needs is not the resurrection of the "mulatto" category, so much as to stop sorting and judging people by race so much in the first place."

Agreed. But if that is the goal then shouldn't things like hate laws, affirmative action, race base funds etc get in the way of that goal? Because as long as there are minority groups lobbying for their specific group then there is no reason why a white group should be considered racist or what-have-you. If every group can only be defined with their group then we should expect the same of caucasians. I think these stratifications tend to lead to tribalism and a lack of national identity/culture which I find more important than race.

Quad: Also note that there's considerable push-back against such "bi-racial" identification from black people. I.e., they recognize the attempt to carve out a distinct identity, and resent the implied racism. I.e., the preference for a "half-white" identity over a "black" one seems to deny that "black" already includes such mixtures to begin with, and to accept that it's preferable to be "as white as possible."

You see this is why I think the US is really very neurotic in terms of their feelings on race, a kind of hangover from the past (much like south africa). Isn't it just as counterproductive to believe black as preferable? Wouldn't it just be better if they could embrace that they are from both races and force society to deal with that instead of choosing sides? Its my opinion that all they are doing is choosing a tribe.

 

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Why, because some don't like it since they find themselves on the wrong side of the fence and it doesn't gel with liberal political dogma that discrimination is wrong?

Is this what science has come to... rail roading truth to appease the hurt feelings of some?

That's no different to abolishing geocentrism because it bothers millions of Christians.

Sorry, evolution exists and nature doesn't give a shit what you think. If you can't look it squarely in the face then maybe science isn't for you.

 

Hardly, it's an insult to every other race. Meaning no matter what happens you and your children and your children's children will never be "good enough" to be white. In other words, your blood has been polluted. Of course this lines are all imaginary...

As far as I am aware, the "drop of blood" policy still exists today. It has little to do with appearance. If you have a minority race parent, you are considered that race no matter how white you may look. It applies to all races in America. If your mother is Asian and your father is white, you are Asian. My great grandmother was 3/4 white but that didn't mean she could ride at the front of the train.
I assume this scholarship is trying to be legitimate like other racially based scholarships, which requires a person to be at least 25% of that particular race. But as far as how Americans define "being white" only near "100%" will do for this scholarship to target the intended applicants.

 

There are all sorts of of scholarships for women and minorities. I find it strange that there aren't more scholarships specifically for white guys. :shrug:

 

In fairness, though, some biracial people do that to themselves. When I was in college, I knew a guy who was half black and half white. He was the whitest looking guy you'd ever see. He shaved his head, but he said it got really frizzy if it grew out. But aside from that, he looked totally white. But he classified himself as black. I've known other biracial people who did the same.

And a lot of people classify biracial people in this manner without racist intentions. Ever heard anyone crow about how Obama is the first black president? I remember people making a big deal about a "black" golfer named Tiger Woods, who doesn't even consider himself to be black.

 

I acknowledge "shades of grey" and consider Halle Berry to be biracial. Because she is.

A while back I got a lot of crap from some people in a discussion here because I was insisting that Obama was biracial rather than black. Because he is.

 

There isn't anything unfair about it. They live here so they classify themselves by how they are taught to classify themselves. It isn't racist, it's just how people identify themselves and others. I could nitpick at the fact that I have some white "blood", but for the most part it is irrelevant. I don't identify myself as a white person and no one else does either. It wouldn't make sense for me to apply for a scholarship for white people or East Indians because while I have it in my genetic make-up, everybody else does not identify me with those races, so I know nothing of their struggles or lack there of.

 

But who teaches them to classify themselves in this way? Anyone who says that Obama is black is as full of shit as a person who says he's white. He's biracial.

And these "teachers" obviously didn't get to Tiger Woods, who has stated that he considers himself "Cablinasian" (caucasian, American Indian, black, Asian).

 

Race is imaginary. Almost every person living in America is a hodgepodge of different races. So certain make-shift rules were created and most people play by those rules. So people who are biracial meaning white/ "whatever" are automatically "whatever", that's just the way it is. It doesn't have to make sense, because more often than not it doesn't. But as far as experiences go, someone like Obama would be treated like a black person, regardless of his other racial origins.

 

He is no race at all, in this meaningless scheme of yours.

In Brazil, he's white - because he wears expensive clothes, and graduated from fancy colleges.

In the US, he's black, because of his physical appearance - just like Cassius Clay, O J Simpson, Malcolm X, and Shaquille O'Neal.

There is no "is" in the matter.

Everybody they meet throughout their childhoods. The entire society they live in.

If the "biracial" could declare themselves non-black, the population of blacks in Alabama after thirty years of Jim Crow would have been a quarter what it was - you think people volunteered for that abuse?

Unless you are planning to follow these people around and correct everyone else's impressions of them, your opinions ain't worth much in the matter. That "biracial" irrelevancy and 50 cents wouldn't even have got them a cup of coffee, in the restaurants of the Old Confederacy prior to major rioting and Federal imposition.

 

In the eyes of anyone rational, he's biracial due to having a father of one race and a mother of another race. This fact is not nullified by the clothes he wears or by which race he may resemble more.

 

Race really isn't imaginary. And I'm not sure that almost everyone in America is a mixture of races. Perhaps a mixture of ethnicities, but probably not race.

And not all biracial people are part white. What about someone who is half Asian and half black, for example?

 

I meant that the lines drawn in the sand about race are arbitrary. People who have lived here for several generations can usually find someone of another race that they are descended from. The reason most African Americans look different from people from West Africa is because of their mixed European ancestry, the same applies to Latinos. Many white people who dig into their history find that their great great something was Asian or black or Native American...etc. You can't see it anymore in them, but that race is still present in their genes. Is it wrong of them to call themselves white?

My great great grandfather was an Irishman is it wrong of me to say that I'm not really white? Or my great great great grandmother was east Indian and her grandfather was Chinese (and that's only on my mother's side). Am I Chinese and Indian too? Technically yes, but should I list all of those things when people ask me what race I am? When is the blood too thin to be of relevance? President Obama's mother may not have been all white either so is he really half and half?

Which is why most scholarships have a cut off at 1/4 of a particular race because technically most Americans would probably be able to qualify if they dug deep enough. Personally I don't think it would be appropriate for me to accept a scholarship for Asians, Indians, or white students because I have never been viewed or treated as any of these races, so I do not share their races' struggles or points of view.

 

In the eyes of anyone rational, there is no such racial category as "biracial" in American society, exactly because nobody bothers to look up the races of somebody's parents before deciding whether to discriminate against (or for) them. "Biracial" people don't get some half-meausre of white privilege on the basis that one of their parents was white. They either get zero white privilege (if they look "black") or complete white privilege (if they look "white").

Yes, it is - racial classification is (almost) nothing more than the sum of superficial resemblances.

 

Invisible factors lurking in peoples' genes, are not "race."

Yes. They aren't white. It doesn't matter how many European ancestors one has, if one doesn't look superficially white. Race is not pedigree.

Yep. Might not be wrong for you to note that your great great grandfather might not have been considered white at the time, though.

In the racial sense? I'd have to see you to tell.

The tiny minority of people that will determine your race by asking you (and respecting your response) are an irrelevancy. The salient mechanics of race leave little room for self-identification (or anyway, respect thereof). People will just decide what race you are on their own, with no more input from you than your superficial appearance.

When it can't be discerned on the skin.

There is no such thing as "half and half," in terms of race. Barack Obama is black, and probably would have been such even if his father were "half-white" himself. Race is not pedigree.

Exactly - your "appropriate" race is determined by how others view or treat you. And not by the details of your pedigree, or any attempt at self-identification on your part.

 

Indeed - and that implies that it cannot be based on inaccessible factors like the particular pedigree of a person. In order for this real phenomenon to operate, people need to be able to recognize the race of strangers immediately, and without any particular interaction. If race actually worked in terms of pedigree, it would break down entirely - you'd never be able to determine anyone's race most of the time, would end up with silly results like the Casta system in the Spanish Empire, etc.

 

What? I know that they were treated terribly. But when have the Irish ever not been white? Lower class whites, but not white?

So you're saying that you don't believe the "drop of blood" theory applies? A person's race is how they appear only and nothing to do with their parents. Even if neither of someone's parents are of the race that people assume that person is? For example if you look Mexican, but actually both of your biological parents are Asian. Are Mexican or Asian?