In light of having recently been called the n-word, I’ve been listening to the new Nas album with a keen sense of interest. Ditto the Wale track called “The Kramer,” which opens with Michael Richards’ awful rant after being heckled at a nightclub.
A propos of nothing - as Ambinder noted recently in his blog, which is linked below, transitions don't grow on trees - a man gave birth to a child recently. We call him a man even though he has female gear down there, and because gender is a social construct, I’m told, gender does not depend on the equipment but rather on the personality inside (or behind) said equipment. In a couple of recent conversations, I’ve heard people express alarm that if gender is up for grabs in a “it’s this because I say it’s this” kind of way, then why not race, nationality, and all the other things that we don’t choose in life?
Race has been a fluid concept for a long time, but it seems that only recently has there been this growing acceptance of the n-word as a kind of eternal human condition. It’s a reversible or revocable one, and it can be a compliment or the worst possible insult. I’m not sure if Nas is being provocative in an intelligent manner or just being intellectually lazy by trying to use it in as many different ways as possible - ditto Wale - but it’s hard to listen to the whole album, along with the aforementioned Wale track, and not come away feeling slightly muddled on the topic. I think I'm also relieved that I'm muddled.
There’s an underdog mentality that plays into group politics, particularly minority group politics – recall that Asian-American kids tell each other they are acting “white,” and certainly among Brazilians, there are unfair and rampant stereotypes about the stiffness of your typical yankee. So, it’s not like “white” is a fixed concept either (I’m not sure it’s out there on the Internet, but I highly recommend the Tracy Jordan vs Twofer debate on this topic from the first season of “30 Rock.”)
The only thing that makes me kind of – wistful, maybe? – is the idea that gets articulated in the beginning of “Gone Baby Gone.” The idea that the things you don’t choose – family, place of birth, etc – are the things that are the most central to who you are. I’ve thought about this in the context of wanting to have dual citizenship, and considered whether an American would have the right to be offended by my choice. I think he or she probably does have that right, but I also think that such a Manichean view ignores the reality that no one wants to be in the position of having to choose something that everyone else more or less inherits. Like making a Wii character (Mii?) and having to choose where your eyebrows go – this is not a decision anyone would want to make, I don’t think.
Most people are never faced with the very traumatic question of whether they were born into the right gender or not, and I can’t imagine anyone taking a dilettante’s approach to the issue and simply skirting back and forth across the line for fun. But with race or other forms of cultural identity – which, for the purposes of this thread, let’s call race just that, a cultural identity rather than a skin color or an ethnicity – most of us seem to be able to switch it around like so many hats that we wear seasonally. I can act more or less Brazilian, more or less like someone in the parking lot at a phish show, more or less like a pretentious fop, more or less like a lapsed Catholic, more or less like someone who prizes substance over style – and it’s an automatic thing rather than a conscious decision. I just emphasize different things, and the emphasis is triggered by my environment, social cues, etc.
So, if no cultural identity is fixed, why do we dislike the idea of race being so fluid? Marc Ambinder does a nice job with the recent campaign flap over who’s race-baiting whom here - and conveniently for me, includes a quote that reminds many of us that feminizing rival candidates has long been a mainstay of political discussion.
To cop words from Joanna Newsom, “the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers.” And though I try to pass myself off as being sophisticated, the truth is that I'm still getting used to living inside the product of that head-butting.
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