Donald Rumsfeld briefed the President this morning.

He told Bush that 3 Brazilian soldiers had been killed in Iraq this week. To everyone’s amazement, all the color instantly drained from Bush’s face. Then he collapsed onto his desk, head in hands, visibly shaken, almost in tears.

Finally, he composed himself, and asked Rumsfeld, “Just exactly how many is a Brazilian?”

Recently there’s been a heated (ha ha) discussion on a few blogs about one black woman’s experience of having a white chick (hereafter referred to as WC) ask her whether or not she got hotter in the sun because her skin is dark. My first thought on reading the set-up of Piny’s post on Feministe about discussing of Nubian’s original post was to think, “Hmmm, good question”. Piny then proceeded to call the inquisitive WC stupid, and to slaughter for having the gall to ask Nubian this question in the first place. Boy, did I feel like a rube.

As I continued to read the discussion on Feministe and blac(k)ademic, however, I started getting pissed off.

First of all, if your nick is Nubian, you’re kind of setting yourself up for questions like these. You’re identifying yourself primarily by your ethnic heritage, after all. Granted, Nubian’s experience happened IRL, so presumedly the white woman knew Nubian as Kourtney and not Nubian. Still.

Nubian inferred from WC’s question that WC is trying to “‘other’ [her] into some kind of sub-human anomaly, whose body functions automatically differently than whites, and in such a negative way”. WTF?!? Nothing in WC’s question implied anything of the sort. Of course I don’t know what was going on in WC’s brain when she asked Nubian this question, but there is no racism implied in the question itself. “It’s a sensible question, the kind of thing a four-year-old might ask Mommy”, as one commenter on Feministe put it. And as a matter of fact, Nubian is other, at least other than WC. I’m other, too. I have different experiences from thin people, and black people have different experiences from white people. We’re all “other” from someone else, and wondering about our differences in no way implies that our own experiences are the default. What the fuck is the matter with acknowledging these differences and trying to learn about the “other”? It’s crap like this that causes the alienation of one group of people from another.

Piny says that “there is a point at which each person must take responsibility for their ignorance.” Sure, yeah. It would seem to be the case, however, that that was precisely what WC was trying to do. But daring to ask an “other” person a question about her experience apparently makes you seem ridiculous–you’re making an ass out of yourself by trying to take responsibility for your ignorance, in this way, according to Piny. Apparently if we’re curious about the experiences of an “other” we should do anything but ask questions of them. Wikipedia and Google were suggested as solutions to this conundrum. OK, but:

Piny goes on to say that “while education may well be the problem of the non-privileged group, it is not their responsibility.” Yes, it is in fact the responsibility, at least partially, of the non-privileged group to clear up any misconceptions others have about them–they’re the only ones who know what the misconceptions are! Ideally people should be accepted regardless of their differences, but this is not an ideal world. It’s also the case that the path to acceptance includes precisely the kind of enlightenment Piny would have minorities shirk. Michelle makes this point beautifully in our discussion of the relevance of busting myths about fat and health to the SA movement. So i wonder, if it’s not the responsibility of the “other” to educate the ignorant about their experiences, who is it exactly that’s supposed to be writing the Wikipedia articles?

Nubian, of course, should not be required to be the sole custodian of the task of enlightening the world about black people. One poster on her blog had some amusing suggestions for a comeback:

Q: “since you are darker, do you get hotter?”

A: “I don’t know. Since you are whiter, do you get colder?”

A: “I am hotter because I am darker, yes. Oh you mean temperature!”

A: “I’ll let you know next time I come round as a white person.”

IOW, there are other ways to think about and defuse the situation than assuming a racist motivation on the part of the questioner.

Some commenters said that if you are ignorant about this kind of issue, you don’t have enough non-white friends. Uh, well, affirmative action doesn’t apply to my choice of friends. I’ve never chosen my friends because of their skin color–I never even thought about my friends’ “race” until I got older and learned that “race” is an issue. When I think about it, though, I’ve actually had a shitload of “ethnic” friends in my life (and no, this is not a case of “I’m not racist–I’ve got a black friend!”), so in my case, at least, my ignorance isn’t due to a lack of dark-skinned friends. I never thought about the skin color/temperature question until just now. (I guess a lot of participants in this debate think that makes me stupid.) So the hapless WC might have been guilty of showing a lack of social skills by asking a mere acquaintance a question that acquaintance felt was rude, but it’s not necessarily the case that the white woman didn’t have enough “friends of color”.

I should also mention that being from Oklahoma, there were very few black people around when I was growing up, and few of those that lived in Tulsa lived in my part of the city. There are a lot of states in the US in which a person might grow up without having any dark-skinned friends due to probability as opposed to racism.

A commenter on Nubian’s blog said that “As these white people haven’t had any form of interaction with black people, they can be extremely insulting and tactless when speaking to them.” Apparently everything a white person says to a non-white person must be evaluated in light of “the larger sociopolitical context of America’s nasty racist history”, according to another commenter on Nubian’s blog. First, I get annoyed at the idea that we somehow are supposed to speak to different groups of people differently, and not just with the care expected of polite discourse in general. Second, how the fuck am I supposed to know how not to be “insulting and tactless” towards “other” people without talking to them, and thus in the process being “insulting and tactless” towards them? I can’t win–according to this logic, there’s no way possible for me not to be “insulting and tactless” toward the “others” at some point in time. Again, cue the issues about alienation and responsibility for enlightenment. Because of the fact that I have always lived in areas with few black people, I don’t know much about how their experiences might differ from mine. I know that many of them get easily offended about race issues, however (as demonstrated in the posts in question), so I get nervous about even talking to them at all, for fear of insulting them or being tactless. Can a WC get a break?

IMO, the best solution lies in the principle of charity. It’s a bad fucking idea to assume the worst in your interactions with other people. As a fat person, that’s something I learned a long time ago. I might give someone a strange look were they to ask me whether my fat caused me to get hotter, but I wouldn’t take it as an indication that the questioner considered me “sub-human”. Christ on a crutch. Of course, I’ll get slaughtered now for daring to compare my experience as a fat woman to the experience of being a black woman.

The commenter so concerned with us “insulting and tactless” white people goes on to suggest that we “need some sort of education system (maybe incorporated into the school curriculum) which answers all these kinds of questions. There needs to be some kind of an educational forum where all people who are genuinely interested in people of other races can ask questions without being condemned, and can be given accurate information, which should serve to dispel any senseless assumptions they may have of other races.” Yes! I think that would be awesome. It’s why I took anthropology in college, and why I’m interested in feminism, fat acceptance, class issues, race issues, and sociology in general. But we have to get the information for these classes from somewhere. Which means that each group of “others” has to take responsibility for providing it, without getting their panties in a wad. They’re the only ones who can relate their experiences, after all.

—

ETA: There’s an awesome comment over at Pandagon that perfectly spells out my frustration with this debate.