What exactly did she mean by that?
On 1 July, ELLE India featured the extraordinary author Arundhati Roy as the cover woman of the magazine’s July issue, in which she was interviewed on her writing, exercise habits and first new novel in 20 years. The interview also raised the issue of blackness, which MISHKA WAZAR interrogates.
Fans of Roy and her Booker Prize-winning debut The God of Small Things fawned over the cover and interview, which gave rare insights into the life of the private writer and activist.
However, the bubble of idolisation quickly burst somewhere during Roy’s answer to the first question of why she was featured on the cover of ELLE India. Her response was: “Because I have seen dark-skinned women on ELLE covers. I love that. I’m a black woman. Most of us are. Ninety percent of us are.”
Ok so Twitter gotten hip to Arundhati Roy glibly dropping the fact she’s black in a recent Elle interview? pic.twitter.com/Zm66oV5Aey
— Zoé S. (@ztsamudzi) July 3, 2016
That “Twitter gotten hip?” is interesting – as if Twitter is the obvious go-to place for wise reflection on issues such as who counts as black and why it matters. Why does anyone think Twitter is useful for that? Twitter is useful for picking fights; it’s not useful for thoughtful discussion.
The answer raised some controversy. Tweeps quickly began to wonder why an Indian woman was calling herself black. What exactly did she mean by that? And who exactly is she referring to when she says that “most of us” are black?
And let’s kick the shit out of her just to be on the safe side, eh?
The use of the term black by non-black people of colour has been a contentious issue in progressive circles of late, especially in South Africa. There has been a Black Pride movement recently on the internet, with hashtags such as #BlackOut gaining popularity all over the world. But even within a positive movement, there are problems. When Jesse Williams spoke at the BET Awards last week, internet trolls were quick to downplay the message of his speech because Williams is mixed-race. Erasure of identity is common where people do not fit into certain circles exactly the way they’re supposed to, and so people began to erase William’s blackness. But how is this navigated when a well-known human rights activist embraces a term that many people believe does not belong to her?
By saying she identifies as black and who is anyone else to say she isn’t black?
No? That’s not the correct answer? That’s odd, I could have sworn…
As a black-identifying woman, Sikhona Nazo, a student at the university currently known as Rhodes (UCKAR), explains that, initially, she didn’t have a problem with Indian people identifying as black, because both Indian and black women are affected by whiteness. However it’s very problematic to refuse to acknowledge that the racism experienced by Indian women is different to the racism experienced by black women. Nazo says that the system is against both groups, but it’s against black women more. As an Indian woman living in India, who is not extremely dark-skinned, Roy has never experienced the same form of systemic and structural racism that black women do, and claiming that she does by embracing that identity is an erasure and dismissal of black women’s painful lived experiences.
Um…………
“Roy has never experienced the same form of systemic and structural racism that black women do”
Because the crown jewel of the British empire was somehow not systemic or structural…
INTERSECTIONALITY!
In apartheid South Africa Indians were classified as ‘coloured’ rather than ‘black’. This did give them rights ad privileges that black people did not have. So, from that perspective I can see this as being a more live issue in SA than elsewhere.
That said, Indian people were most certainly discriminated against by the British, both in India and throughout the Commonwealth. I can’t help but feel that rather than perpetuating those colonial distinctions todays activists would be more productive if they pulled together the experiences and energies of those discriminated against to fight racism, sexism etc in all its forms and manifestations, rather than trying to fight just their corner…
“The university currently known as Rhodes”, presumably it soon will be the “university formerly known as Rhodes”.
I wonder how much discrimination Roy would be subject to in India, that would depend on her caste, wouldn’t it?
So, now the self-appointed thought police have developed their own standard for “blackness”, only officially approved individuals will be accepted.
Has anyone from the (for lack of a better term) “young” new left attempted to explain why they treat gender identity so differently from racial identity? Why it’s taboo to question someone’s self-identified gender while virtually the opposite is true with respect to race — where the taboo is on anyone who racially self-identifies in a questionable way?
I’m really asking, by the way. I’m curious to know if anyone’s earnestly tried to reconcile this seemingly obvious contradiction in the dogma and the approach they took to address it.
Well I’ve seen responses that purport to do that, but I’ve never found them convincing. That’s putting it politely.
If an Indian author is speaking to an interviewer for an Indian magazine, shouldn’t it be understood that she meant “black” in some sense that it is used in India. Certainly during the Raj the Brits used “black” and less polite synonyms freely. Isn’t that the primary influence on how the word is used in India?
I have a feel like this is the suffragette T-Shirt controversy all over again.
See, that’s your problem Ophelia. Your bloody desire to question and analyse things, rather than accept what proper people tell you is right is exactly why you (and by extension your readers) are branded as TERFS, transphobic, islamophobic and whatever.
/s
@ 6 Latverian Diplomat,
Yes, you might have a point about context. However I wouldn’t necessarily assume that the concept of ‘blackness’ was introduced by the British. The original Sanskrit term for ‘caste’ implied color.
One of the things I had to learn as an American living in the UK is that here ‘black’ means people of Middle Eastern and South Asian as well sa African descent. It just does; it’s one of those words (pants, rubber, diary, biscuit, gas, etc.) that has a different meaning in English English compared to American English. And Indian people tend to use English English. It would be nice if Americans were more aware of that.
For some reason I came across this article fairly recently, even though it’s no longer topical:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/15/jenner-dolezal-one-trans-good-other-not-so-much
@ ^
I noticed that in an earlier post.
Well I did some reading around, and — whaddayaknow — everything I could find of the left’s efforts to reconcile their conflicting ideas about gender and race is terribly flimsy. I thought at least I’d find some food for thought, but no. This was the best I could muster:
– “Gender is more deeply rooted in one’s own mind, while race is more forcibly imposed by the surrounding society.” (Hmm citation seriously needed there.)
– Transracialism is about Deception therefore it’s deceitful, whereas transgenderism is about Truth therefore it’s true. (Circular reasoning at its most absurd.)
– Transgendered folks face discrimination and social disapproval in a way that folks who identify outside of their prescribed racial identities don’t. (This doesn’t really address the question — but what’s worse, it isn’t necessarily true, as we’ve seen in the case Arundhati Roy here, and of course Rachel Dolezal last year. Monnica T. Williams, a psychologist writing at Psychology Today, said, “The real issue is that switching from White to Black defies the unspoken social order and therefore elicits social punishment. Dolezal’s parents were so distressed with her “downgrade” that they needed to publicly “out” and humiliate her.”)
– Gender dysphoria is real and recognized in the DSM-5 while “transracial” folk don’t have a named psychological condition. (Well, for one thing, sometimes they do: body dysmorphia is no less “real” than gender dysphoria is; take a look at Lil’ Kim. But more to the point: since when do liberals put so much stock in the supposed wisdom of the DSM of all places?!)
It’s striking when you take some of the arguments about race and reword them for gender. Like this Guardian piece, for example:
Sounds like a TERI — a Trans(racial) Exclusionary Radical Intersectionalist.
Egads. You’d think people oppressed in one part of the British Empire would recognize that the British called pretty much *all* darker skinned people who were to the south of them black. I mean, I’ve read them writing about Arabs as black in some cases, which threw me, but I’m American, so there was that cultural divide. Since Indians speak British English, they understand back to have a broader meaning than Americans do.
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Samantha, not so long ago there was debate as to whether even Irish people were ‘proper’ white. This ‘intersectionality’ thing, which has people saying “…the system is against both groups, but it’s against black women more” – an explicit comparison of opression by the way – appears to continue the previous endless division and classification by ethnicity. Except I suppose this time it’s for an internal pecking order rather than real world power.
Young idiots can’t be bothered to think that words don’t mean whatever THEY want them to mean. Thus ‘Black’ is completely overtaken by very specific, uniquely American, meanings. Our mixed race Kenyan President is expected to pose as a Chicago grandson-of-sharecroppers cliché. Dealing with his actual racial and cultural experience would require some thought and reflection….never going to happen.
I can confirm that, even today, in the UK “black” is frequently used to mean, “not white”. Increasingly we’re seeing the use of “black and Asian” but black as a noun still usually refers to Asian, Middle-Eastern and Afro-Caribbean people. It is a largely neutral term too. Perhaps not the most sensitive word but definitely not a slur. Interestingly, it does not include South East Asian people.
I’m mildly surprised at Roy using black to describe herself – I would have expected the more specific Asian. However if she is making a point about the commonality of experiences of dark skinned people then, yes, in UK English she might well choose the word black.
I’m pretty sure I’ve read Kenan Malik on the shift for South Asians from being “black” 30 years ago to being “Muslims” now. And I know I’ve read stuff on the politics of calling oneself black in the UK. There was a time when it was discussed a lot.
As far as I can make out, people use ‘Asian’ in the UK exclusively to refer to South Asians (or people who appear to be). People who in the US we’d describe as ‘Asian’ are generally referred to by their (presumed) country of origin, as ‘East Asian’, or occasionally as ‘Oriental’.