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1. Sherri Shepherd doesn't know if the world is flat at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture on 21 Sep 2007 at 9:10 am

   […] is to only post things that make white people look stupid (although, I guess that makes me a self-hating white person), I had to share this with […]

Comments

1. Angel H. wrote:

   Wow.

   She’s a dumbass.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 3:46 pm ¶

2. Rabia wrote:

   Jawdropping! Gotta love the “if not black, then white” dichotomy.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 3:55 pm ¶

3. Wendi Muse wrote:

   wow…I wonder where this woman found her “anthropological” backing…especially considering that basically everything she says is “off.” P.S. This is me being polite…

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 4:00 pm ¶

4. dnA wrote:

   I think the one thing that can move me quickest to violence is when someone tries to tell me what race I am, or what someone else is, based on their own essentialist definitions of race.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 4:01 pm ¶

5. sunsail wrote:

   I ditto that.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 4:17 pm ¶

6. Vox wrote:

   “Black people DO not see themselves as beautiful…period. … You may be the exception, especially if you are light skinned. Dark skinned black kids hate themselves. If you think not then you are living in a dream world.”

   What? Just … what?

   “IndoEuropean language roots decided who is caucasian and who is not. When I was in grad school I thought that the skeletons I was analyzing all had the landmarks that would make them white and not Native Amer. But no one would have believed me. Guess what? Now they are saying (the experts) that the Indians were white from Europe and not Chinese!”

   Um, no they aren’t. /anthropology major

   “Finally being black, as a culture, is universal. We have genes therefore behaviors in common. One thing is that curly pony tail she wears on her head. That is SO very black.”

   So everyone who wears a pony tail is black? What?

   I’m just in awe at this woman. I really am.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 4:28 pm ¶

7. mamazilla wrote:

   wow. that was painful to read.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:09 pm ¶

8. HighJive wrote:

   (TV COMMERCIAL CONCEPT)

   Customer: Carmen, how do you stay so White?

   Carmen: Ancient Chinese secret.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:15 pm ¶

9. M wrote:

   wow. this is the most ludicrous line of logic i have ever heard.

   Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:16 pm ¶

10. trixnee wrote:

    Actually there are a lot of people who think Eurasians are white. Check out eurasiannation.com. Also, think of “white” celebrities…Keanu Reeves, Jennifer Tilly, and even Vanessa Minnillo…how many think of them as non-white. Not too many people!

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:38 pm ¶

11. FrancesM wrote:

    Frickin’ hilarious!
    ~F

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:41 pm ¶

12. LM wrote:

    That’s pretty funny. It’s a lot of other things too. Wow.

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:41 pm ¶

13. That Queer Chick wrote:

    Hey, you didn’t mention the part where Heloise said “I do think Angelina is beautiful, but black? Give me a break. She does not look black even on her worst day. ” Then “I don’t see why people don’t like my worst day comment. I thought it was funny.”

    Heloise has a very special perspective on race, doesn’t she?

    That Queer Biracial Chick (It’s okay to call myself that, ’cause my daddy was black)

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:48 pm ¶

14. Yolanda Carrington wrote:

    Heloise, you’re a genius, really you are. Now tell that to all the racists out there who harass and assault mixed-race Asian folk. It’s high-time that they get the memo.

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:50 pm ¶

15. Blanky wrote:

    She’s correct on one point–back in the day, you did have to be Anglo-Saxon to be “white.”

    Everything else is blatant bullshit.

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 5:55 pm ¶

16. AssamTea wrote:

    It’s strange that she even brought up your racial background and how you cannot be biracial when it wasn’t even relevant to her discussion. That and the “Jewish Producers” and strange reincarnation bit.

    Maybe she is talking about light skinned vs. dark skinned? But after saying American Indians are white, she then went on to describe a friend as white AND American Indian.. Or maybe she confused Indian American with American Indians? She considers Northern Indians (Aryan-origin) white so maybe she meant Southern Indian Americans? But then later she changes her opinion and says Southern Indians (Dravidian-origin) are “not Black people.”

    So only those of Black-African origins are Black? But she makes a point not to include South Asians as white.

    And before stating that only half-Black people can be biracial, she also declared that these people are “just Black.” So then who is biracial?

    Heloise continues to contradict herself so much that I wonder if this is all just a joke

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 6:08 pm ¶

17. Kaywil wrote:

    “I have a sister who’s black, married a biracial man and their kids all have blonde hair and blue eyes and married whites. But they are black, and not biracial. Race is so complex, more than people know.”

    …there’s no one drop rule there…

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 6:43 pm ¶

18. Jay wrote:

    …Northern Japanese are considered white. China is the root race for Caucasians, AmerIndians, Mexicans and Indians, DNA-wise. So it is a case of the root returning to the the progeny. She is certainly NOT black and that makes her white. That is the box she should check.

    Um… I didn’t know “China” (as in the country) was a race… and evidently mixing a “root race” (whatever that means) and a “leaf race” makes a “leaf race”.

    I should stop before my head explodes.

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 6:45 pm ¶

19. Mark N. wrote:

    “Race is so complex, more than people know. ”
    –Well thank God we have Heloise on the case to sort us all out.

    “So it is a case of the root returning to the the progeny.”
    –Actually, I believe this is more a case of “I have no idea what I’m talking about and I should stop embarrassing myself online”.

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 7:01 pm ¶

20. Josh wrote:

    Man, reading that woman’s ramblings has taught me a lot. Aside from the obvious lesson about half-white, half-Chinese people being white, I also learned that the “anthropological definitions of race” include reincarnation. Who knew!?

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 7:11 pm ¶

21. Mina wrote:

    It gets even weirder. I know someone who thinks that white Americans think that Indians who have narrow noses and dark brown skin are caucasian. o_O

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 7:33 pm ¶

22. Kokoro wrote:

    sounds like she’s been smoking too much of you know what…

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 8:23 pm ¶

23. Neneh wrote:

    Who is this nitwit?

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 9:18 pm ¶

24. mireille wrote:

    This gave me a headache.

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 9:25 pm ¶

25. FEB wrote:

    It is somewhat arrogant of her to label Carmen as “white,” but in a way, isn’t she only verbalzing what is probably in the subconscience of many Americans?

    Eventhough the “one drop rule” was created by whites as a way to maintain slavery, black culture has assimilated this concept as a racial norm. Consequently, black civil society has a tradition of accepting mixed children.

    Conversely, Asian ethnicities do not have a tradition of accepting mixed children. There are studies that suggest most hapas tend to be identified as white by their parents, but that might be a result of patrilineality and the fact that most Asian-white marriages involve white males.

    In a way Heloise’s views represent a realignment in the American racial paradigm. The old binary structure of black/white is now replaced by a stratified framework of white, near-white, near-black, black. But then again, she seems to waiver between acknowledging racial stratification, or selectively applying an inverted “one drop rule” (i.e., mixed children with one drop of white are regarded as “white”).

    She is right about one thing… this is a very complicated topic.

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 9:26 pm ¶

26. corbinl wrote:

    woooow. wow.
    So everyone who has no african ancestry is white…Heloise is truly a groundbreaking racial theorist.
    So which race will you reincarnate into, Carmen? haha

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 10:07 pm ¶

27. Winn wrote:

    Carmen,

    Did you visit her actual website? As soon as I read the comment in the excerpt about “root races”, I knew I was hearing some Madame Blavatsky “Theosophy” claptrap. And sure enough! Although theosophy is an…”interesting” occult philosophy, why it would hold any allure for a POC is beyond me. And trust me, their definition of race bears no relation to the “Anthropological definitions of race” mentioned by Heloise. Check the Wikipedia entry for “Aryan race” to see what theosophy has to say about race, especially blacks. Heloise sounds seriously deluded and self-loathing to me (check her later comments about Black women viewing themselves as unattractive and dark-skinned blacks hating themselves!)

    Posted 31 May 2007 at 10:08 pm ¶

28. manong wrote:

    I find it doubly sad when people of color embrace crazy f’d up racial theories.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 12:15 am ¶

29. Denis wrote:

    I guess she’s right… in her own turf. But isn’t that what race is? Something totally subjective that is in the eye of the beholder.

    To me races are like colours. There are so many or they are classified only by who’s looking at them. Colours are perceptions of the same thing: light. Most cultures differentiate black and white (this is an easy dichotomy that works to well for races as we see). Then some colours differentiates red too. Only a few cultures differentiate blue, yellow and green. All the other colours are only very recent.

    Race is the same thing. It’s just a perception of the appearance of a human being. The easiest difference is dark vs light, ie. black vs white. With that dichotomy she’s right. Then if you add shades of colours you can have more races. But again, race is just a thing in people’s head and culture just like colour is.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 3:52 am ¶

30. Denis wrote:

    lol:
    ‘Then some colours differentiates red too.’
    I mean ‘Then some cultures differentiates red too.’

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 3:57 am ¶

31. Lyonside wrote:

    Oh, how did I miss this doozy? Shows what we’re up against…

    However, this stood out for me:
    Mina: “It gets even weirder. I know someone who thinks that white Americans think that Indians who have narrow noses and dark brown skin are caucasian. o_O”

    Mina, I get what you’re saying, but this is 1 place where the anthropology supposedly backs it up (nothing else Heloise claims is backed up though). Anthropologists historically have looked not at skin color per say, but at facial bone structure, hair texture, etc. to talk about regionally-based macrophenotypes of the human species (which roughly correspond to but aren’t exactly what anyone means by race). If by Indian you meant “from India”, going by those definitions, yes, most Indian subcontinent natives are phenotypically similar enough to European/Mideastern natives to be considered historically Caucasian. The paler skin tone is theorized to be a recent (i.e. 10,000+ years old) mutation that coincided with the retreat of the last glaciers and Paleolithic human’s movements into northern Europe.

    Add to that that Sanskrit is one of the language roots of a scary number of Indo-European languages (hence the name), which adds support to the idea. Look up the root syllable/word “pa” sometime: pa, pater, padre, patri all go back to a word translated as “father” “man” and “farmer.”

    Native Americans have been linked to central Asiatic steppes peoples, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.

    It doesn’t matter, since all Homo sapiens sapiens ultimately originated in East Africa. I find it sadly ironic that most of the world lumps “Africa” together, when I think I was just reading that the human genetic diversity in sub-Saharan Africa is higher than any other continent - it’s everyone else that’s, sorry to say, a little inbred (including me).

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 7:40 am ¶

32. Angel H. wrote:

    HighJive: Love it!

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 8:57 am ¶

33. Zoe wrote:

    In response to FEB’s comment:

    FEB, I am the offspring of a white mother and Asian father. I know many other hapas with similar backgrounds, and I am insulted by this generalization that hapas are only the result of Asian women-white men unions, which is offensive not only to the children, but also to Asian men and non-Asian women in general. Neither of my parents, nor my extended family, has labeled me as “white,” and none of my Chinese relatives (whether from mainland China, Taiwan, or US-born) have had a problem accepting me as a person of mixed heritage. So much for those studies you mentioned.

    FEB’s original comment:
    Conversely, Asian ethnicities do not have a tradition of accepting mixed children. There are studies that suggest most hapas tend to be identified as white by their parents, but that might be a result of patrilineality and the fact that most Asian-white marriages involve white males.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 9:03 am ¶

34. susanc wrote:

    HighJive: That was brilliant!

    Zoe: I totally agree with your response to FEB’s comment. Personally, I feel that it’s up to an individual how they choose to identify themselves. It’s kind of funny that even though I self-identify as Asian American, my brother strictly sees himself as half white/half Asian. (When he describes the number of Asians in his office, he always says “1.5 Asians”)

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 9:45 am ¶

35. berrybrowne wrote:

    thanks for bringing it all back to africa, lyonside…

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 1:10 pm ¶

36. Anonymous wrote:

    please. most half-asians could easily “pass” for white. it’s so ironic that you’re protesting with histrionics typical of a clueless white person.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 2:19 pm ¶

37. mireille wrote:

    Lyonside is totally on the money and brilliant. I read somewhere reputable, though I can’t for the life of me remember where, that there is more genetic diversity in a group of chimps than in all of humanity. I assert whenever possible that there is no biological thing as race and if there where it would be eclipsed by what culture defines race and ethnicity as. Racial definition is so arbitrary, the perception of race is all that matters. And as you know if you read this blog, racism exists even if there is no biological justification for it.

    Carmen can choose to define herself however she pleases and to challenge her perfectly reasonable claims is an assault on her personhood. I’m glad can have a sense of humor about it, because I would have just been indignant.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 2:32 pm ¶

38. FEB wrote:

    Zoe & Susanc

    Both of you are misconstruing my comment, so before you get wrong idea, let me clarify three points.
    …

    1) It is a statistical and demographic fact that there are more Asian-white couples that involve white men rather Asian men. If you don’t belive me check the US census, read some academic journals, ask Carmen.

    2) What I’m saying is that studies show a higher number of the parents identifying their children as white because American society follows patrilineality… you take your father’s name. It doesn’t mean that hapas actually identify themselves according to what their parents say. They may start with what their parents say, but change as the years go by. Bear in mind that a STUDY about racial/ethnic identification is NOT a DECREE about how you should identify yourself. Please be sure you don’t conflate these two things.

    3) What I should have said was “Asians are in the process of becoming more accepting of mixed children being identified as Asian; however, they still don’t think acceptance comes as easily for Asians as it does for blacks.” Asians in Asia usually live in racially and ethnically homogenous societies; therefore, those who are recent immigrants to America may not be quite ready to identify mixed children as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and so forth… Attitudes change with education and the onset of globalization, and your extended family is proof of it. But remember, your immediate circles are not the same as the larger society.
    …

    The study was conducted by a reputable and respected Asian sociologist, and printed on a scholarly publication: it is sound, rational, and credible. If you want to contest it I’ll be glad to provide the title and author, so you can go the library and read it yourself.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 2:38 pm ¶

39. Jeremy Pierce wrote:

    Maybe there’s something coming in here from theosophy that I’m unaware of, but her initial argument seems relatively straightforward without that. It sounded to me as if she was assuming that the one-drop rule only applies when black parentage is involved, but it also seems as if she’s assuming that someone is all-or-nothing, and that means there must be a one-drop rule in the other direction. Therefore anyone with white ancestry and no black ancestry is white, anyone with any black ancestry is black. I’m not sure how this classification system would work with people of no white and no black ancestry who are nonetheless mixed. But it’s not necessarily incoherent, anyway, even if it’s pretty messed up. There do at least seem to be rules she’s relying on, even if she pulled them out of her butt.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 3:56 pm ¶

40. LM wrote:

    @ lyonside… excellent breakdown. I didn’t know about the language roots or the Native American-central Asiatic link, so thank you for the education.

    @ FEB… your original comment reads clear as a bell to me. Your followup was even better.

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 5:37 pm ¶

41. Anonymous wrote:

    She teaches children!

    Dear S. Leslie,

    You probably have not been reading all my articles and know that I teach black and mexican kids in an urban school. I recommended that Oprah because I SEE IT everyday.

    I have the hardest time with the girls who are darker in skin, look more black, usually overweight, otherwise not the “Ideal” and then there is the hair issue.

    They hate themselves and often project it onto others. I talk what I know. THat show really was representative of what most black teens feel about themselves. THat they resent authority figures, does not help. Both black and white teachers agree that Mexicans are easier to teach, are better students, (maybe they are afraid of authority) and do better on tests than the black kids. This was shocking to me when I see kids whose English is not as good as the blacks yet they score higher on the tests.

    I am talking WHAT I know. I have the scores in front of me. That is all part of self hatred. THen the parents. OMG, they attack the teachers. Then tell you they care and believe in education. Anyway I digress and could go on about it. But believe me, black kids are extremely difficult to teach.

    My kids love being black. So, I agree with you it is not representative. THey both married black people from Mississippi–both have beautiful spouses (one was a model) the other looks like Barack. And of course my kids, don’t look black, but are also beautiful. People swear that they are bi racial, and they are not.

    Heloise

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 8:36 pm ¶

42. justin wrote:

    FEB, I think I understand what you are trying to get at. Heloise was voicing what is probably in the subconscious of many white Americans, which is all the U.S census data they read afew years ago or some kind of secret psychic knowledge about Carmen’s parents?

    Posted 01 Jun 2007 at 9:05 pm ¶

43. Meg wrote:

    This topic makes my head hurt - such a dopey comment, so much to say. But i guess Carmen you should be pleased that you don’t have to bother deciding your own identity cos someone else has it all nice and laid out for you, frees up some time in your schedule right?

    Posted 02 Jun 2007 at 8:04 pm ¶

44. gatamala wrote:

    Heloise, I am quite certain your attitude towards your dark, difficult students is all too apparent to them - likely compounding the problem.

    Posted 04 Jun 2007 at 12:21 pm ¶

45. Leon Wynter wrote:

    I may be cruisn’ for a brusin’, but their is an underlying bit of truth to the observation that began this whole skein, however arrogantly the it was originally put.

    Of course people of “mixed” racial heritage have every right to self definition, and nobody has the right to impose race on them. BUT-the fact is that in this country race still centers around one question: are you black or not.
    If one is not black, it is then possible for one to EFFECTIVELY chose to be white, i.e. to assume 90+% of the benefits of white privilege. If you don’t believe me, go ask the majority of successful (or aspiring) people of non-black racially mixed provenance I’ve EVER met. Regardless of their politics. It’s possible to be a rabidly anti-racist person of any Asian/Hispanic/Middle Eastern decent combined with “white”, and still effectively live a “white” life.
    NB: Asian, Hispanic and Middle Eastern are not races, anyway. By scientific racism, Asians from Southeast Asia going up are Mongoloid. So called Hispanics, as we always hear, can be of ANY race.

    The point is that American race has been socially constructed PRIMARILY to determine who was black, not who was white. Who was white—i.e. who could slide into the benefit of white privilege over time—has always been a fluid concept. What distinguishes the present age from the rest of American history is that large numbers of people with mixtures of every kind of blood EXCEPT African can and ARE sliding into the tent.
    I offer the huge rates of Asian/Hispanic out marriage with non-Hispanic whites into evidence and rest my case. Among the highest white privileges is exemption from the “one drop rule.” Black women cannot give birth to white babies. But Asian and Hispanic women can, and are doing so at double digit rates.

    Nobody can tell you what race you are, Carmen. But you can’t tell any number of people of your own sanguinity what their race is, either.

    Posted 07 Jun 2007 at 11:57 am ¶

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