{"id":17,"date":"2005-07-25T20:24:28","date_gmt":"2005-07-26T00:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/femilicious.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/25\/week-4-racialized-bodies\/"},"modified":"2007-11-27T09:32:25","modified_gmt":"2007-11-27T13:32:25","slug":"week-4-racialized-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/2005\/07\/25\/week-4-racialized-bodies\/","title":{"rendered":"Racialized Bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Because I am white I have experienced the privilege of being part of my society\u2019s dominant group.  I have never worried that I would be the only person \u2018like me\u2019 wherever I have needed to go.  I have not stood out as being visibly different and in the community where I live; whenever I have preferred to blend into a crowd I have been able to do so.  <\/p>\n<p>I live minutes from Detroit, Michigan where in many communities I am a visible minority.  Because I am white I have been taught to be afraid of going across the border because my colour puts me in danger as if all Black people in Detroit are gun toting and blood-thirsty with a hatred of all white people.  Even though I know this is a stereotype, years of brainwashing and minimal experience have left me feeling insecure in some parts of the city.  I have been warned by customs officers not to go places.  Police officers have escorted white women I know out of neighbourhoods where they \u201cwere not supposed to be\u201d.  It is hard to separate which reason justified the warning and escort: is it because we are women or because we are white?  Or are the two so linked that they cannot (and should not) be separated?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>One of my distant ancestors was one of Canada\u2019s First Nations people, from Northern Ontario in the region of Manitoulin Island.  My uncle has done the genealogical research but I do not know the details of the number of generations removed.  I like that I have some claim to the land where I live even if my blood is diluted to the point of invisibility.  I worry though that the partnering was not one of choice, making my white ancestors more culpable in their colonization of Canada\u2019s indigenous people.  <\/p>\n<p>When I see a beautiful woman of colour I have to question myself: do I think she is beautiful because she is beautiful?  Or am I influenced by the cultural suggestion that women of colour are beautiful because of their contrast as a group to the dominant white group?  I do not feel this same awkwardness\/anxiety\/apprehension when I see a beautiful white woman. <\/p>\n<div style=\"float:left;\"> <script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-content\/ga1.js\"> <\/script> <script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"> <\/script> <\/div>\n<p>My daughter showed me this year that just outside the music room in her school there is a bulletin board of famous composers.  There are profiles of about a dozen dead white men and she asked me why there were no women.  We made a plan to research a few like Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann to add to the board and during the process we discussed other marginalized groups who lacked representation.   The school has a very diverse population with many new Canadian families.  To look at this bulletin board many would believe that composers are only white men.  Finding information about non-white composers, especially women, is difficult.   Composing has traditionally been an occupation for the upper class and extremely few non-white men and even fewer women are privileged enough to make it into this group. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Because I am white I have experienced the privilege of being part of my society\u2019s dominant group. I have never worried that I would be the only person \u2018like me\u2019 wherever I have needed to go. I have not stood out as being visibly different and in the community where I live; whenever I have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}