tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15231380.post113345416699082253..comments2023-10-19T07:54:32.841-04:00Comments on Quod She: Blog Against Racism: Invisible Men and WomenDr. Viragohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15231380.post-1133480514088750712005-12-01T18:41:00.000-05:002005-12-01T18:41:00.000-05:00"I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance..."I am an invisible man.... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me".<BR/><BR/>I was looking for this quote for two days. Thank you so much for posting it.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15231380.post-1133476509174700632005-12-01T17:35:00.000-05:002005-12-01T17:35:00.000-05:00Lecturess,I think I've had similar experiences. A...Lecturess,<BR/><BR/>I think I've had similar experiences. Although Rust Belt Historic District (as I shall now call my neighborhood) was historically white, it became largely black in the '60s and '70s and only in the last two decades have gentrifying whites and others moved back in. Now RBHD itself is pretty racially mixed, though the surrounding neighborhoods and all of the schools, public and Catholic, are almost entirely black.<BR/><BR/>*Anyway*, after having lived in racially and ethnically diverse areas of both Sprawling Big City and Vertical Big City, I thought I'd seen it all, but like you, I find I haven't really seen myself as racially inscribed until living in a area where, in some situations I'm the only white person. And I hadn't really seen more subtle, institutionalized forms of racism in action, up close and personal, until some of my experiences here -- like my post on voting, which I'm going to add as a link in this post because it just occured to me that it suits the theme of the day.<BR/><BR/>And I think you're right that that discomfort about talking about race is both about a) whites not thinking of themselves as racially defined and b) the over-emphasis on experience as the only authority for speaking about it. But if race is socially constructed and contingent, and if we all have "race," then we should all be able to talk about it.<BR/><BR/>(That said, *man* it took me a long time to come up with a topic for my post that I thought wouldn't sound too much like condescending liberal white guilt!)Dr. Viragohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15231380.post-1133474445512179442005-12-01T17:00:00.000-05:002005-12-01T17:00:00.000-05:00Thanks for this post and this link. I've blogged a...Thanks for this post and this link. <BR/><BR/>I've blogged about this several times in the past, but it wasn't until moving here to Historically Black Neighborhood--where I'm in a distinct and obvious racial minority--that I really started to realize the degree to which my own concept of "racism" and even racial identity, were all out of whack. <BR/><BR/>I think I just didn't <I>get</I> the degree to which I'm defined by my race as much as a person of color is--I'm not sure I could have gotten it, either, until I lived somewhere where I was hyper-conscious of my race every time I stepped outside my door.<BR/><BR/>This seems to me to be very common: we right-thinking white people are all properly appalled at an obviously racially-motivated crime, but on a day-to-day basis, do we even think of ourselves as <I>having</I> a race, or belonging to a common one? The assumption of a lot of whites seems to be that race, and racial identity, and even conversations about race, are for <I>those other people</I>--the people who have a race, that is. It's not really <I>our</I> issue (and isn't it a bit tiresome how they're always acting like it is??).La Lecturesshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09892747650463978861noreply@blogger.com