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2 aoû 09 01:59 - Still figuring myself out racially. Part 1: Being of pan-Mediterranean heritage
When I think about how to understand my racial identity, it gets so complicated as to defy definition.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, I'm classified as "white," because they define that category to include people from North Africa and the Middle East. As a Sicilian, I look to my North African Berber and Arab heritage as much as I do to the European side. My father's skin is so dark that I'm not sure how he passes as white. But he and the others in my family look unhappy when I point out to them their African ancestry. Like in Do the Right Thing or True Romance.
One hundred years ago, Sicilians in America were classified as nonwhite. At some point (probably after the United States allied with Italy in World War I) they decided to have us be white. I didn't get the memo.
My Afghan and Iranian friends (who are descended from the real Aryans) identify as "women of color." Their color is the same as mine. I'm not officially a woman of color, but in my de facto life experience, I don't pass perfectly as white. I mean white in terms of the social conventions around here.
On paper at the Department of Labor, Arabs are listed as "white." But to white Americans in real life, Arabs are The Other with menacing chords played every time they come on. Skin color has played no part in how Arab peoples have defined Arabness. The result is that the whole range of skin colors, in infinite gradations, from European white to African black, occurs among the Arab ethnic population. There is no one Arab skin color (though some shade of brown or olive is typical, especially in the Arab heartlands). The absence of a defining color bar must be upsetting to a racist society like white America, where the color bar was all-important in structuring American society.
With my swarthy Mediterranean olive complexion and my Arab-looking nose, people almost always assume I'm an immigrant from the Middle East. I've been asked if I speak English. I've been scolded by an angry bigot that "you people" are ruining everything, as he told me to go back to the Middle East where I came from.
It isn't so cut-and-dried that I'm automatically "white" in America. The default when it comes to beauty advice is blond-haired and blue-eyed. So I never thought makeup advice in general was very useful to me until I found the book Latina Beauty, which finally gave women of my color relevant information. One thing I learned from this book is a survey of makeup use showing that Latinas use more makeup than whites, blacks, or Asians. They could also count Middle Eastern women among the major makeup users. Something about the richness of our complexion allows for more makeup than is the norm for lighter complexions. The category white may be inclusive of my color in theory, but in white America's cultural setting the practical application of the concept white is skewed toward light complexions.
When I went grocery shopping the other day, this Arab guy started hitting on me. "'Scuse me, miss, where are you from? You look Arab."
I said over my shoulder while walking briskly away, نعم أنا عربية. He shouted after me, "عربية؟ السلام عليكم Let's get to know each other!" By that time I was out of there. It figures, why it's always the Arab guys sniffing after me like I'm a bitch in heat.
And of course I got the po pos called on me because I was sighted in a snooty neighborhood, and anyone who looks like me must be a terrorist.
I'm not a woman of color, but then white doesn't quite sit right with me either. I don't pass for "white." Maybe "white" is not the most accurate identity for me. But what that is, beats me. I always seem to fall into the cracks in between categories. And that's fine. I'm just me.
Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand.
--John Ruskin
According to the U.S. Department of Labor, I'm classified as "white," because they define that category to include people from North Africa and the Middle East. As a Sicilian, I look to my North African Berber and Arab heritage as much as I do to the European side. My father's skin is so dark that I'm not sure how he passes as white. But he and the others in my family look unhappy when I point out to them their African ancestry. Like in Do the Right Thing or True Romance.
One hundred years ago, Sicilians in America were classified as nonwhite. At some point (probably after the United States allied with Italy in World War I) they decided to have us be white. I didn't get the memo.
My Afghan and Iranian friends (who are descended from the real Aryans) identify as "women of color." Their color is the same as mine. I'm not officially a woman of color, but in my de facto life experience, I don't pass perfectly as white. I mean white in terms of the social conventions around here.
On paper at the Department of Labor, Arabs are listed as "white." But to white Americans in real life, Arabs are The Other with menacing chords played every time they come on. Skin color has played no part in how Arab peoples have defined Arabness. The result is that the whole range of skin colors, in infinite gradations, from European white to African black, occurs among the Arab ethnic population. There is no one Arab skin color (though some shade of brown or olive is typical, especially in the Arab heartlands). The absence of a defining color bar must be upsetting to a racist society like white America, where the color bar was all-important in structuring American society.
With my swarthy Mediterranean olive complexion and my Arab-looking nose, people almost always assume I'm an immigrant from the Middle East. I've been asked if I speak English. I've been scolded by an angry bigot that "you people" are ruining everything, as he told me to go back to the Middle East where I came from.
It isn't so cut-and-dried that I'm automatically "white" in America. The default when it comes to beauty advice is blond-haired and blue-eyed. So I never thought makeup advice in general was very useful to me until I found the book Latina Beauty, which finally gave women of my color relevant information. One thing I learned from this book is a survey of makeup use showing that Latinas use more makeup than whites, blacks, or Asians. They could also count Middle Eastern women among the major makeup users. Something about the richness of our complexion allows for more makeup than is the norm for lighter complexions. The category white may be inclusive of my color in theory, but in white America's cultural setting the practical application of the concept white is skewed toward light complexions.
When I went grocery shopping the other day, this Arab guy started hitting on me. "'Scuse me, miss, where are you from? You look Arab."
I said over my shoulder while walking briskly away, نعم أنا عربية. He shouted after me, "عربية؟ السلام عليكم Let's get to know each other!" By that time I was out of there. It figures, why it's always the Arab guys sniffing after me like I'm a bitch in heat.
And of course I got the po pos called on me because I was sighted in a snooty neighborhood, and anyone who looks like me must be a terrorist.
I'm not a woman of color, but then white doesn't quite sit right with me either. I don't pass for "white." Maybe "white" is not the most accurate identity for me. But what that is, beats me. I always seem to fall into the cracks in between categories. And that's fine. I'm just me.
Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, laid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their grey-green shadows the burning of the marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry sloping under lucent sand.
--John Ruskin
bitchy