race fail, identity politics and democracy

[lobelia321]

I am quite disturbed by what is being commonly called the Fandom RaceFail09, i.e. the kerfuffle / imbroglio surrounding racism, the appropriation of markers of racial or ethnic otherness (I can't quite tell which) as exotic marginalia in (mainly sci fi and fantasy) fiction, the mudslinging among a variety of LJ users which includes the outing of some LJ users real-life names, and the stamping of people by themselves or by others with acronyms such as POC (persons of colour; an acronym I first learned about a few days ago).

I am a German and I live in England. As far as I can tell, this debate arose mainly among American LJ users (American citizens and perhaps also foreigners living in the United States). Certainly, I am not familiar with much of the acronymage and baggage from an English context. (Nor from a German one but I haven't lived in Germany for some years so things may have changed a little but, judging from frequent visits there, not that much.)

It dismays me that the sides seem to be drawn so clearly, that there is this division of the world into POC, 'allies' and a third category whose label escapes me right now. The word 'allies' is hauntingly allied to the German word 'Mitläufer' or fellow traveller; it also reminds me of the 'friendly' and 'unfriendly' witnesses of the anti-communist McCarthyist House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The concept of 'POC' is deeply worrying to me as it appears to stamp millions of people with one label, ignoring both the diversities and tensions within the enormously so-called 'non-white' populations of the world, and the diversities and tensions within the 'white' populations of the world. It also ignores the hybridities of many, and the way people move in and out of different identities. But this may be my own cultural ignorance / prejudice, and come down simply to a matter of culturally-specific American nomenclature. Not that nomenclature doesn't matter, especially in a debate about race.

I am also disturbed by the earnestness of the tone. This is an earnestness I am, to a certain extent, familiar with from my days spent living in Germany. Germany do tend to be earnest, which has earned them (us) the reputation of being humour-less. I lived in Australia during my formative years and am married to an Australian. Now, Australia is about the opposite of German earnestness. Irony is the default mode of Australian-ness. And the English also tend to deal with situations of conflict often with a retreat into irony. I like this. I feel trapped in irony-free zones of earnest debate.

As to the race debate: from what I've read (and I admit I have not read every single post contributing to this debate nor do I intend to), a lot of it hangs on identity politics. Identity politics came to the fore around the end of the 1970s and really took off in the 1980s. I don't like identity politics. I see the points of it and the political advantages but I prefer the Enlightenment view that what we share as humans is more important than what divides us. To me this is an important political view as well because it is what democracy is founded upon.

Democracy is founded on the trust that one person can represent another. It is a politics of representation. Identity politics goes against the grain of this because, ultimately, everybody can only represent themselves (or people 'like' themselves but as nobody is quite like another person, it ends up atomising society). I believe in democracy as a system of representation.

It is also why I love fiction. Fiction to me is the one medium where people can crawl into other people's heads. It enables me thoroughly to escape the trap of my own identity and liberates me to see the world through someone else's eyes and mind. It allows me to imagine others as a reader. And as a writer, it also allows me imagine myself into others' heads, others who are not like me.

Should I be worried about moving to the US? Would I do better to stay in Europe? Is my use of the Firdausi icon an example of benighted Orientalism? Or of 'enlightened' Orientalism?

Comments

[blythely.livejournal.com]

And the English also tend to deal with situations of conflict often with a retreat into irony. I like this. I feel trapped in irony-free zones of earnest debate.

LJ-at-large (and actually to be fair "the blogosphere") feels like this to me nowadays.

I appreciate your point about the democracy and politics of representation; I hadn't quite thought of it that way before.

I'm looking forward to moving to Europe for a new set of cultural experiences; were I moving to North America I think I would have much more trepidation.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

There are some who would look with trepidation at moving to Europe:

http://chopchica.livejournal.com/165552.html

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I was so traumatised by chopchica's report that I totally went off LJ and didn't reply to any of my comments here. Not rational, I know!

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

One comment on terminology: the term "people of color" (and similar usages) arose in the US during the 1980s (from my knowledge) to try to break the black/white binary that was so common in U.S. discussions of race: i.e. the need to acknowledge the presence of multiple "ethnic minority" groups, who came from and had different cultures and histories, but also needed to coalition together to work against white racism. That is, the critiques by feminists of color published in the 1980s did coalition work between black, latina, hispanic, asian-american, women in the U.S.

As a term generated by and used by people of color, I see it as exactly the opposite of your sense of it.

I had a post in my journal where the problematic use of "ally" was discussed as well. I'm not wondering if anti-racist racist white person or something similar might not be better. The term parallels male ally in feminist discourse: which comes from the idea that many hold that men claiming to be feminists is problematic, but that a male might work with feminists as an ally to further feminist goals. I have no problem with a man calling himself a feminist if he actually DOES things rather than just assume he's liberal and therefore feminist. But as a white person (fourth generation, third born in this country, from Welsh and Scottish and German immigrants), I need a term to indicate that I am a white who is aware of her own racism and willing to work on racism in myself and in my general vicinity (these days, it's fandom and academia).

I don't see all the current debate as being hinged on identity politics (which I know mostly from its feminist usages), although I am sure it exists--there is work being done on intersectional and coalition politics.

However, I also have a major negative view of "Enlightenment" rhetoric because as far as I'm concerned, that theory underlies a lot of the oppressive institutional systems in this country.

As far as the US vs. Europe, I'd recommend you read a brilliant post by chopchica about her experiences as a Jewish woman traveling around Europe:

http://chopchica.livejournal.com/165552.html

Many British fans of color have written about the racism in Britain, quite eloquently, in this racism imbroglio or in previous ones, so they experience the native form of racism there.

I will say that thinking that what appears in the public media or even a LJ imbroglio is a reliable indicator of what it's like to live in a place is problematic.

A friend made me ride a bus from Greenwich Village to the MLA hotel when I was back there for the conference because she was tired of the outsider's silly view that anybody in public in New York City woudl be shot on sight--that bus ride was enlightening. They were normal people! They were pleasant! They smiled! They did not shoot or rape me! There was more to NYC than the crime shows and the news stories!

[msilverstar]

For what it's worth, I (with my very jewish last name) and my husband spent two blissful weeks in France in 2005 and never had chopchica's problems. I may have seen a few swastika graffiti, but I do not consider that a societal expression of impending doom -- I consider that an expression of contempt against the established order, by people who choose the most outrageous symbol they can fine.

Your mileage may vary.

[birdgerhl.livejournal.com]

i have to say that i was shocked and surprised by chopchica's post. whilst i would agree that anti-semitism is - regrettably - still alive and kicking all over europe, it's certainly not my impression that it is present at the levels described. i saw more fascist graffiti in england in the 70s than i've ever seen in europe in the last 10-20 years. this is not to discount her experiences, obviously.

b.x

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Swastikas are an interesting logo / icon / graphic motif. I agree that for the disaffected graffitiists of Europe, the image has lost most of its 1930s political meanings. But they do know that 'Nazi = Bad' and that they themselves very much want to be Bad and Shock the Establishments. Daubing a swastika somewhere is the quickest shortcut to that aim.

I remember that some years back Jewish cemeteries somewhere (France?) were desecrated. I'm thinking a similar logic probably operates here. It would be interesting to figure out how much actual anti-semitism remains in Europe where so few Jews now remain, to what extent that anti-semitism is inflected by other, post-1945 concerns, and how it relates to the racisms (for want of a better word) that operate towards people who are more numerous and more present, e.g. migrant workers, Moroccans or Algerians.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Re-reading this, I'm thinking that maybe it might be premature to discount anti-semitism altogether for Europe. But the how of it is not quite clear to me.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I see now, having thought about this for a while, that much of my response came from trans-cultural misunderstandings. It seems clear that 'people of colour' is a culturally specific term used in an American context whose implications I misread. It is one of the side effects (pitfalls? advantages?) of the interwebs that these nationalist assumptions will always tend to be undermined / complicated / questioned by the international audiences. So that one has to explain oneself explicitly over and over again: I am a German living in England with the vocab knowledge of an Australian and so forth.

I'm not wondering if anti-racist racist white person or something similar might not be better
What is an anti-racist racist? Or is this a typo?

I will say that thinking that what appears in the public media or even a LJ imbroglio is a reliable indicator of what it's like to live in a place is problematic.
I'd say Amen to that except I'm not baptised. :-)

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Yes, as far as I know, the term "people of color" (and there are other nouns that often replace "people" such as "women of color" or "feminists of color" or "fans of color") came into usage during the 1980s (I saw the term in the critques by women of color published during that decade where they analyzed racism in the white second wave feminist rhetoric and movement).

I've been rather flabbergasted by people I know to be U.S. claiming that the usage is racist: it is problematic, but it was coined (in my experience) to break the black/white binary of mainstream racist language in the U.S. which ignored the existence of all other ethnic groups, and to provide a term that could be useful for coalition work between people in different ethnic groups. It also allows for more awareness and inclusion of "mixed-race" people. The term is not perfect, but language is a very clumsy tool--it's just the only one we have!

Nope, "anti-racist racist" wasn't a typo. It was an attempt to complicate the over simplified binary of "two sides."

The problem that occurs with anti-racist is that there's an idea that anti-racists are not/cannot be "racist" which is not true--some would say an "anti-racist" is a racist aware of hir own racism and working on it. It was an attempt to break down the idea of simple binary of racist/anti-racist. Since some of the white people involved felt that those of us who identified as anti-racist were being righteous and sanctimonious and holier than thou, the idea was to say more or less, no, I am racist but I'm working on it (in this usage, "racist" is not limited to the Ku Klux Klan!)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, anti-racist racist -- I get it!

My problem with white and people of colour is that it (to me) sets up a dichotomy all over again, so that you have White People over here and People of Colour over There (or vice versa with the here and there). This ignores fluidity of boundaries, inter-white racisms/discriminations, inter-peopleofcolour racisms/discriminations, and identities that don't fit neatly into either camp. And, as we know from marked and unmarked language debates, as soon as you have an opposition or a dichotomy, there is the danger of setting up a hierarchy and making it all about white people yet again. Because the people of colour are only people of colour when set up against white people. That is the only way that category makes sense to me. And that's what I don't like, that through the backdoor it's then all about white vs other yet again.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Well, sometimes I've heard white people refigured as "people of no color" in a satiric mode!

But I do see your point--however, since in the U.S. it was white people (primarily elite white men) who established the binary category and wove it into the discourses of law, custom, religion, morality, and all other practices, and who held the most power in their hands, I refuse to see the "binary" as equal in that way that I (perhaps mistakenly) see as implied in your comment.

Choosing a term to use as a part of coalition work (rather than as an essentialist part of "nature") is part of the work of dismantling it. I can recommend Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination as an excellent presentation of how the "whiteness" and "blackness" binary developed in the U.S. with 'freedom' as a social concept depending upon the presence of an enslaved black population as a good introduction to the kind of work I'm drawing on.

And in actual fact, if you review published works by women of color (I work more with women's work, because of my feminist inclinations), you'll see that in fact there are all sorts of intersectional, borderland, and attempts to work past the binary -- I can happily provide a bibliography -- including all the work in critical race theory, global feminism, and other work. So based on my reading, I know that white vs. other is NOT the sole result of coalition work and the origin and usage of "people of color."

Pragmatically speaking, there's also the need for language to use in discussing such issues. And since the default position is still claimed by whites (I've found over the years it really pisses whites off if you call them white, just as men get pissed off by being told about masculinity as a social construct) and since the racialized binaries are still upheld by the white dominant group, I don't see any way to get around the need to have a term which can be used in such discussions (where there's no time to deconstruct it all).

Can you suggest any terms that don't in fact reflect the binary since that raced binary exists (and the millennia plus that has gone into establishing it, even before the U.S., isn't going to be overcome in fifty years of social activism)?

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

'People of no colour' -- that is a hoot. As in 'ponc'. "Hello, pleased to meet you, I'm a ponc." *snorts*

It pisses white people off to be called white? How odd.

There is, I have to say, a sort of I-want-to-be-a-victim kink among certain academics. This was especially strong in the late 80s and 90s, I think, when the whole identity fragmentation thing first became a big issue in academe. I was at a conference where it was hilarious to see Famous White Professor bending over backwards and contorting himself into odd ideological positions in his desperate quests to join the ranks of the Cool Marginalised Non-Mainstream Kids. He's not gay; he's not working class (very important for Academic Street Cred in the UK); he's not from the 'North' (also very important in the UK); he's a tenured famous professor with a permanent job and a wife (and a former wife) and two kids and a fabulous house and a no doubt comfortable salary but he really, really wanted to be a socialist.

So I'm white, straight, middle-class and mainstream. Someone's gotta do it, *g*.

The upshot is that I actually don't know detailed things about any American feminist debates about races and colours and whatnots. So the intersectional borderland you mention sounds very intriguing and promising.

No, I can't suggest another term. But I don't actually believe that the binary does exist. I think binaries are linguistic constructs, and of course, inasmuch as any construct exists, they do exist, but they rub up against people's real perceived and experienced multiplicities all the time. And if this happens within me, who is fairly mainstream, it must be happening among everybody. Do you know Amitav Ghosh's Sea of Poppies? That is an expression of what I mean. Can someone not inhabit many identities; must I be pinned down to one? Or something to that effect is what one Indian woman character says in the novel.

[azewewish.livejournal.com]

Europe has its own set of racial issues & we don't need to look any further than the Muslims in France for that.

The U.S. has its racial issues, of course, no one's denying it. But most of my experience (and I've lived all over the country) has taught me that people are just people & that's how they'll treat you. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

has taught me that people are just people & that's how they'll treat you.

I was talking to an American friend of mine who's lived over here for two decades and recently went back to visit her relatives in L.A. and she said more or less the same thing. She said at first she was shocked by her new in-laws who were all surf-obsessed and had had about twenty facelifts each but then she realised that they were just like her and her family and had their own worries and kindnesses and hang-ups like the rest of us.

[junalele.livejournal.com]

I totally understand your unease about terms like "POC" (I didn't know about this one at all and gah, it sounds like 'Pocken' to me) and especially "allies" because yes, being German as well, this ascribing fixed terms for racial issues makes me uneasy as well.

Also, the term 'ally' in this context makes me cringe because to me it has a clear militarian/war connotation. Which might be a misconception on my part about the English word?

What worries me about Amercian debates about race and gender and also more and more about German debates about these issues, that it seems to be all about terminology. Maybe not in academic research but in the way people deal with things. Because to me it seems like side-stepping the issue and teaching people how to side-step the issue. Like calling Ausländer "citizens with migration background" or writing MitarbeiterIn alone isn't doing anything. Oh well.

P.S.: I so understand you about irony. It's one of the things I love about living in Berlin - we might moan a lot but we always do it with a bit of irony. And yes, it seems as if the general view on irony and sarcasm in the US is quite different than in the UK or maybe Europe in general.

[acari.livejournal.com]

I have to disagree. I do think terminology is part of the problem. Words have power, as the saying goes. Part of the effort in creating a more just society is reshaping language. Calling someone "Ausländer" is not neutral, it conveys are belief that a person is not from here, not of this country, not part of it. It doesn't matter if that person was born in Germany and identifies as German, they are put outside that community by calling them that.

Of course, if that's all that's being done I totally agree with you, it's often used as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I do believe it's a worthwhile effort to get words like Neger, Fidschi, etc. banned from "normal" discourse.

And while -Innen is unwieldy, I do appreciate not having to wonder if I am included in the plural of choice.

[junalele.livejournal.com]

Oh, no, no. I agree with you. Language is a big part of things. But to me it often feels as it is really used as the get-out-of-jail-free-card as you put it. Like making sure people 'gender' terms and stuff is the only effort done anymore. And that's not enough.

[acari.livejournal.com]

Okay, that was clearly a misunderstanding then and we actually agree with each other. *g*

[junalele.livejournal.com]

We do. But in my annoyance about How the real issues seem to be so often reduced to empty debates about ever changing terms of political correctness, I also tend to forget how powerful language is. Can't hurt to be reminded again. :D

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

I would like to second acari. Using the word Ausländer means a) calling someone a foreigner (= Not-German), even if they were born in Germany, their parents were born in Germany, and their grandparents came here when they were young, and b) pretending this is perfectly normal and neutral and doesn't deny someone else their own identity as a German.

[junalele.livejournal.com]

I agree. I just meant that to me it feels as if making sure everybody uses the currently politically correct terms seems to be the only effort done anymore. And that won't work at all. Like when the Frauenbeauftragten at university call a special hearing because somebody failed to use the right words, but do nothing when profs say that they would get a guy as their assistant if they'd need somebody to do actual work and a woman to be eye-candy.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I remember this whole debate from the time I lived in Germany in the 1980s where there were Ausländer and then there were Aussiedler and then there were Umsiedler and then there were other nuanced categories of something-or-other-siedler. What I hated about this nomenclature was the way it all boiled down to a discourse of 'blood': either you had the (pure Aryan) German blood or you did not. So if you were a Turk who'd lived in Germany all her life: too bad. And if you were a Ukrainian who knew not a word of German but who had the 'Blood': hey presto, have a state grant to do a German course and come home to the motherlode.

I don't know if this kind of differentiation still goes on.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I've come to realise that this is very much an issue of intercultural misunderstanding and one of the side effects / advantages / pitfalls of the internet life. We're all learning to live cheek by jowl here with other English-speaking cultures plus on top of that, many of us are then translating the various English idiolects into our own native languages and perhaps misconstruing further nuances from that.

:-)

[junalele.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely. It's fascinating.

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

The concept of 'POC' is deeply worrying to me as it appears to stamp millions of people with one label, ignoring both the diversities and tensions within the enormously so-called 'non-white' populations of the world, and the diversities and tensions within the 'white' populations of the world.

That might be because you are German. Being German myself, I was in a situation today where I wanted to answer a question relating to RaceFail'09 in German, which turned out to be much more difficult than you might think. The word race itself is racist in German, so I can't use it. There is no generally accepted word that refers to all people of color. I could say ethnic minorities or people with a migrational background, but that includes other groups that aren't PoCs. What makes it even more difficult is that the closest equivalent to PoCs would be Farbige, but that usually means Afro-Germans and is considered derogatory, so I wouldn't use it for Black Germans and can't use it for PoCs.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention it because this problem could be part of the reason why this worries you so much.

And I think it is a problem, because not having a word for something doesn't mean there isn't any racism (on the contrary, racism is the one word still in use), it just means the language makes it difficult to talk about it and if you don't have words describing the concepts, it makes it that much harder to confront the very real racism that exists.

[acari.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking about writing a post about that language divide. I can use the word "race" with no problem whatsoever, but if I take "Rasse" into my mouth I feel the need to rinse and gargle for half an hour.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, absolutely, I feel your pain.

Although I can use 'Rasse' when talking about dogs. And I can even use 'reinrassig', when talking about horses.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

This is interesting!

Of course, you don't even need to speak another language to encounter this kind of meaning-mapping problem. I just returned from New Zealand and it amazed me to realize how many words had different connotations than they do to an e.g. American.

And I think it is a problem, because not having a word for something doesn't mean there isn't any racism (on the contrary, racism is the one word still in use), it just means the language makes it difficult to talk about it and if you don't have words describing the concepts, it makes it that much harder to confront the very real racism that exists.

How true!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is what I meant when above I said that the interwebs throws you into constant cheek-by-jowl proximity with people from all over the globe who supposedly all share this one hegemonic, globalised language of ENGLISH but who have different idiolects of English and, on top of that, may also be translating the diverse Englishs they read into diverse mother languages in their heads. No wonder we get transcultural linguistic misunderstandings.

And to think that once the only worries I had were to do with Britpicking or Ameripicking or with finding colourful local verbs to smuggle into Karl Urban's speech!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

This is what I've come to realise, that it's all one big transcultural linguistic zone and it's very easy to fall into traps and pitfalls of perceived meaning or translated meaning and to be arriving at meanings that diverge from the ones in whose contexts the various concepts were originally conceived for. (Gads, what a sentence.) And yes, goodness, Farbige is clearly totally weird and unacceptable.

Perhaps 'die Bunten'? 'Heh, du, ihr seid die Weissen und wir, ey, wir sind die Bunten.'

Reminds me of a well-known gossip magazine...

[starrylizard.livejournal.com]

I prefer the Enlightenment view that what we share as humans is more important than what divides us. To me this is an important political view as well because it is what democracy is founded upon.
Amen sister. That is very well said.

I was totally oblivious to this stuff going on yet again. A while back I remember a few groups were attacking SGA fic authors, especially for AU fics, saying that they were marginalising the "characters of colour"by giving them jobs of servatude, etc. I found the whole things weird at the time, especially when you read the fics that were being attacked.

I assume this has something to do with people feeling empowered by Obama's election? You know, I'm not sure I want to know. I'll just crawl back into my oblivious corner of LJ and happily hide behind my irony (which yes, is so totally the Aussie default. *nodnod*)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

The thing is I am spooked (is that word even allowed??? hello, word police?) by the debate if it's about real-life racial issues but if it's about fiction and especially fanfiction...? Goodness, get a life, peoples! But then, of course, one could argue that what goes on in fanfic is by no means isolated from real-world issues and preconceptions. One thing, though, about fanfic is that, by definition, it's based on a canon, and often it's the canon that pre-chews the whole racial ideology for us and delivers it to us, hook line and ideological sinker.

I had to look around for a while to find non-white people in Lord of the Rings real-person fandom but, as the canon for that one was unusually large, I did find them in the end, *g*. (One is in my icon.)

[msilverstar]

I'd agree that most of the people involved in the heated center of the discussion are Americans, not European. So some of the rhetoric sounds bizarre and/or stilted to you, but it's not so much to people involved. Ally, for example, is a normal term for individuals or groups who agree on an issue and work together for it.

What I get from my experiences and the discussion with articulate and passionate POC friends is that Enlightenment reasoning only goes so far. Where the dominant culture creates institutions, they tend to be comfortable and reasonable for themselves. They may not be either familiar or meaningful to people who are not from that culture. I'm making up an example here: if some American group set up "Swedish Snow Day" -- people who look like our stereotype of Swedish wouldn't notice, while those with dark skins would feel unwelcome and invisible. That's the general kind of thing fans of color mean when they say "Othering".

So science fiction writers and editors, who are mainly friendly with those like them, who happen to be very pale, are rarely challenged on their worldview. Unless their kid goes to a very diverse public school, which is one thing that keeps us grounded. These lovely f&sf professionals do not mean to be racist. They truly hate the idea. So they are hugely defensive when a person of color looks at a book and says it's racist.

Elizabeth Bear is one of those people, and she read a blog post angrily accusing her book of racism. She tried to react in a positive way, but her friends flew to her defense. Unfortunately, what a great many of them said was that it was not really racist, the blogger was reading it wrong. And then they tried to explain how the blogger & allies were reading it wrong. And that EB is a lovely person and would never write anything racist.

One of the few good things I attribute to Deconstructivism is lessening the importance of authorial intent.

The arguments expanded to discuss whether the whole professional genre of fantasy and science fiction is sufficiently welcoming to people of color. The name-calling became pretty vehement, mainly on the establishment side, which sometimes seemed to threaten to use its power (editorial, financial, social) to punish those who were disagreeing.

Finally, two people who think and say loudly that online names are not good enough, exposed the real name of a person who disagreed with them, and continued to use it after she asked them not to.

So I do think there are some identity politics involved, and also some places where Enlightenment logic may more or less disenfranchise various groups. The problem with irony and witty writing in this kind of discussion is that people, whose senses of self deeply involved in this, will take things seriously, and be mortally offended if someone dismisses their concerns with a flip reply

I guess I'd rather see earnestness than the alternatives.

[msilverstar]

A UK point of view: http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2009/03/08/reasons-to-care-about-racefail/

[tvillingar.livejournal.com]

I'm making up an example here: if some American group set up "Swedish Snow Day" -- people who look like our stereotype of Swedish wouldn't notice, while those with dark skins would feel unwelcome and invisible.

Actually, I would feel unwelcome too. I had no idea I felt that way until I saw it written. Let me try to analyze this a bit: declaring a snow day as a Swedish event would exlude all the other countries that get snow as well. I mean, why not a Norwegian snow day? Or a Danish (though this one is, curiously, a pastry) one?

Part of this is probably the national trauma of having been under the Swedish rule for 400 years - it's still present in our heads, somehow, though we've managed to tone it down from outright warmongering to slogans like "We love to hate Sweden" or "Sweden is our dearest enemy." Mostly this comes up in sports: we can take losing to everyone else reasonably well, but losing to Sweden is always a bitter thing. It reminds us of the time when we were not independent; someone from the outside made the laws and told us how to live in our own country. And for that moment, our nation actually hates Sweden and then it passes - until the next sports event.

Why I'm bringing this up is that I see your point about otherness when it concerns skin colour (because that is one of the easiest to point out besides religion) but using specific language can and will make quite surprising groups feel like outsiders. Like me ;)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I thought of you when I read about the Swedish snow day! Ah, it doesn't even need the construction of 'race' to make people suspicious / prejudicial / activate memories that go back centuries. Europeans know this, alas.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I'm now understanding that much of my unease with the debate stemmed from issues of linguistic and transcultural misunderstandings, and this is perhaps an inevitable side effect / fringe benefit / pitfall / disadvantage of the interwebs life where we all live cheek by jows in what we might think is a homogenised, globalised framework of The English Language but which, in fact, is a patchwork of English idiolects from various continents plus a translation into various people's mother languages on top of that.

So, after that tapeworm-length sentence: no wonder that sometimes misconstruals arise!