{"id":7044,"date":"2012-03-27T11:40:51","date_gmt":"2012-03-27T15:40:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=7044"},"modified":"2012-03-27T11:40:51","modified_gmt":"2012-03-27T15:40:51","slug":"longing-for-a-post-racial-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2012\/03\/longing-for-a-post-racial-society.html","title":{"rendered":"Longing for a Post-Racial Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The ways that people in the United States talk about race and skin color troubles me. I have long wanted to blog about this, and as I have thought about it time and time again, I kept returning in my mind to the cast of The Sarah Jane Adventures, a Doctor Who spin-off for younger viewers. Here is a photo of the main characters at one point:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If you look up information about the two actors on the left side of the photo, they are described as \u201cBritish<\/a>\u201d or \u201cEnglish<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

How would they be described if they lived in the United States? As \u201cIndian-American\u201d and \u201cAfrican-American\u201d perhaps? And the other two would simply be \u201cAmerican\u201d in all probability?<\/p>\n

Do you see the problem?<\/p>\n

One of the great things about science fiction is the way it allows us to envisage society different from our current experience. In this case, it is not the difference between present and imagined future, but present in the United States and present in the U.K., that makes the point.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>If we are to make real progress in thinking differently about race in the United States, we absolutely have to find ways of talking about identity and skin color that do not treat \u201cwhite\u201d as though it were the default and thus not worth mentioning, and everything else as \u201cblack\u201d or whatever. There are a range of shades of skin color.<\/p>\n

Would talking about skin tones as \u201cdark chocolate,\u201d \u201cmilk chocolate,\u201d \u201ccaramel\u201d and \u201cvanilla\u201d be an improvement, I wonder? Are there other<\/a> ways<\/a> that we can get to the point of acknowledging that all<\/em> skin has color, and there are a wide variety of shades, and no one of them is the human default or the American default<\/em><\/a>?<\/p>\n

While some of us may happily self-identify with some particular heritage connected with another part of the world, or even have dual citizenship, we do not single people out as \u201cEuropean-American\u201d simply because of their skin color.<\/p>\n

I have no problem with anyone self-identifying in any way they choose. But given how common it is for people in the United States \u2013 and indeed anywhere in the world \u2013 to have mixed ancestry, isn\u2019t it time to stop pigeonholing people on the basis of skin color?<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it time that everyone in the United States, regardless of skin color, was simply considered \u201cAmerican,\u201d and all our different shades of skin color, like hair and eye color, were equally mentioned, so that none is viewed as the default? Can you imagine if blond hair was just \u201chair\u201d and anyone with some other shade was said to have \u201cblack\u201d hair, no matter whether it was brown or black or somewhere in between \u2013 and in some places discriminated against because of it? Why do we continue to accept a similar practice regarding skin color? And what terminology should we adopt to get beyond it?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ways that people in the United States talk about race and skin color troubles me. I have long wanted to blog about this, and as I have thought about it time and time again, I kept returning in my mind to the cast of The Sarah Jane Adventures, a Doctor Who spin-off for younger […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[3073,9886,9896,10778,11389,13160,13163],"class_list":["post-7044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-fiction","tag-england","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-sarah-jane-adventures","tag-skin-color","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states"],"yoast_head":"\nLonging for a Post-Racial Society<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The ways that people in the United States talk about race and skin color troubles me. 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