from Amazon
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
When whites talk to blacks about race
In Montreal, we have a fairly healthy number of Haitians and Jamaicans. In my old neighborhood, half the people were Italian and the other half were Haitians. When I saw a report of Jamaicans on the news, the Haitians were adamant that there was nothing similar about the Haitians and Jamaicans. They said they looked different and they behaved differently. To my inexperienced and teenage eye, I didn’t know any better. And when I went on vacation, this very dark-skinned Mediterranean friend-of-a-friend said he was not black… he was just dark-skinned. While a dark-skinned friend of mine from Venezuela says that he is black. What I learned is that when a non-white person says something about himself relative to other non-whites, I should shut up and listen, because, frankly, what the heck do I know.
So, when I read Torii Hunter:
“People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they’re African American,” Los Angeles Angels center fielder Torii Hunter says. “They’re not us. They’re impostors(*).
I was reminded of all those experiences, knew exactly what Torii meant, and thought nothing more of it.
(*) Imposter is not a good word as it implies intent on the part of the targetted person (in this case Dominicans). Torii must have meant that “They’re not us. Whites see them as black.”
Craig Calcaterra, all-round good guy, sees it differently:
I have great respect for Torii, and I wouldn’t deign to know more about race and baseball than he does, but this statement is 100% unadulterated bullcrap.
I presume that if you read Torii’s remarks to American-black, Caribbean-dark-skinned, and White-Americans, you would get three very different reactions, from 90% agreeing Torii on one side to 90% disagreeing with Torii on the other side. Torii’s problem is that he lives in a country where 70% of the people have some degree of bias to disagreeing with him.
I’m going to continue to shut up and listen.