Race, sex, and self.

This is not an easy topic. There are many, many, many blog posts on it, many quotes...what inspired this particular post is my friend Dan's Facebook status, in part.

"I have a dream that one day my children's children will be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."- Martin Luther King, Jr. "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male [judge] who hasn't lived that life." Sonya Sotomayor, University of California Law School lecture

Dan, I see where you are going with this, and in part, I agree, but we are also colored (pun only half intended) by our experiences and the culture in which we grew up. A WASP is going to see things differently than someone who grew up in the slums of Mumbai, or someone who grew up in Harlem. We've all had different experiences, and that does flavor our actions and reactions and decisions... but reverse racism isn't the answer either. Its not just about being Egyptian, or Latina, or Argentinean, or straight, or gay, or even female or male. Sometimes we do put too much stock on labels, rather than just being people.

She does have a point, in that her experiences have given her a different outlook, and different outlooks are always valuable. But at the end of the day, aren't we all human? Shouldn't we celebrate both the cultures we grew up with as well as our common humanity? Because even the white male and the Latina woman, the homosexual male and the dyed-in-the-wool Catholic, the poorest person from the garbage village in Cairo and Donald Trump, we're all human. We all love, hate, feel. We all had parents, we were all children, we all have dreams.

And sometimes I think we get too involved creating niches. But then I also see my CCD students who have never seen poverty, even second-hand, or the parents who censor even the G movies... and I worry that they will grow up with such a narrow world-view that they are unaware that there are people who are different than themselves. Because even with all the wonderful changes towards multiculturalism, there are still strange biases and stereotypes. I sometimes find myself falling into the trap... I think we all do. I saw a wonderful production a couple of years ago, with Connecticut Opera, of Don Quixote (sp?). It was set in a 'Western' setting, and everyone was multicultural, except for the fact that they plunked in an anachronism. An Asian servant. He was made up to look Asian, with the coolie hat, everything. And it just felt wrong to me.

And I see not creating stereotypes, and not perpetuating stereotypes, but we have to not fall into the opposite trap as well, by picking someone on the basis of race or gender or sexuality alone. We have to start looking at people as a whole, not ignoring their race, but including it. Because your race does still affect you, in this day and age. Your nationality affects you... it is all a part of who you are.

Me? I'm a straight, Egyptian American, Dual national, who speaks French, who is single, who also has a hearing impairment. I'm fat, short, grew up abroad, went to boarding school, I like to read, and I have a gluten allergy. :D I've had some amazing experiences in my life, but these make me different from someone who grew up in California, then came to the same boarding school, then went on to something else.... I was different from the other Egyptian kids I went to school with because I also had American characteristics, but when I came here, I stood out because of my Arab characteristics. And in college, I was asked to be a member of UMOJA, because Egypt is in Africa, therefore I was African. I'm an African who gets sunburned! That, to me, emphasised the absurdity of some of the labels we have, and the oddities that can result from trying to combat labeling. That by identifying ourselves as something, we end up tying into the culture that we are trying to combat and level.