Clarifying Conversations

This past week I worked an event called Clarifying Conversations.  There was 1 black man who was the moderator, and a panel: 1 black woman, 1 foreign (Latina?) woman, 1 white man, 1 Asian man.  At one point the Emerson professor who identified as a black woman, brought up the point from an article in The NYT (possibly The New Yorker) that brought up the qualifying of race.  When writing or reading articles, we qualify people by race when they are something other than white.  We say things like John Doe, a black man of 42...as opposed to John Doe, a white man of 42.  If race is not stated, we assume the person is white.  White is the default.  This was such an interesting concept to me, primarily because I never really thought about it. 

I feel like Baldwin would have a lot to say on this matter.  In the opening he talks about how the history of a people is never a pretty one.  However, despite the dirty history of white people, the qualifying adjective gets erased and whiteness is assumed until otherwise noted.  However, if a person is of any other race, he/she is immediately stated as such. 

Another interesting part of the Clarifying Conversations event was the notion of why continuing to talk about race is still important.  Chris discussed this in his blog post--slavery wasn't that long ago.  It really wasn't.  As much as we whitewash history, math doesn't lie.  James Baldwin talks about the importance of identity and the inability/ability to chose it.  The panel discussed if everybody continues to mix and breed together, will the issue be solved?  Will there no longer be the plight of the colored man?  Nobody on the panel thought so, and I would agree--as I think Baldwin would.  We cannot fix the problem through muddling it and mixing everybody and pretending like nobody was wronged because now things may be right.

Overall, I really enjoyed Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son.  It gave me a lot to think about.