"My" people

[Belsnickel]

(04-12-2018, 05:17 PM)PhilHos Wrote: So, I recently downloaded (illegally I'll admit) all the comics associated with DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis miniseries. I'm still in the "prologue" comics, the ones that just have the Monitor making appearances and there's a comic based on a super hero group call the "All Star Squadron". In this particular issue (written and published in 1984), there is a race riot and the villain is inspiring hatred in whites. One of the heroes is a black man (called Amazing Man) who defeats the racist villain.

At the end, after he's vanquished the villain, Amazing Man says something about helping "his people." One of the other heroes (a white woman) responds something like "I wish you would recognize ALL Americans as your people" but she says she understands what he's saying.

It got me thinking: how much closer could we come towards true racial reconciliation if people stopped seeing themselves as part of group based on their race? A friend of mine (who's black) and I have had some discussions on race and one of the things I found surprising is that he sees himself as a black man. The thing is, I don't see myself as a white man. Yes, i know I'm white, but that's not part of how I identify myself, yet, that's part of how he identifies himself.

In any event, gotta give it to the writers of a 3rd tier Justice League-type comic to get me thinking 30+ years later.

I was listening to an activist talking about this sort of sentiment the other day. He was referring to the question often asked that is "why do you have to make it all about race?" This is a similar sentiment to what you are expressing here. The problem is that it isn't always the members of those groups that are separating themselves off. The whole concept of race was constructed by western (white, upper-class, Eurpopeans or of European descent) academics. Then, we as a society define these racial categories. What makes a person black or white is an agreed upon idea within a society. People that don't often think about their racial identity in society are often doing so because of a position of privilege where they do not incur as many negative impacts on their daily lives because of that identity.

A black person is constantly reminded of their racial identity in their daily interactions with society, and the same is true for other minority groups. It would be great if we didn't look at race so much, but that just isn't who we, as humans, are.