After reading I wasn't surprised at all by any of the claims stated in the reading, i was surprised somebody else finally had the same train of thought as I. Gates open a Pandora's Box that is the concept of what really defines a race and takes a step at calling it a trope which i can agree with.
Being black myself I have dealt with this personally on many levels. In Miami, there are people who are black yet don't identify with the society's concept of Black but instead with being Hispanic or of foreign descent. The idea that we let a term represent such an ambiguous meaning is in fact wrong in my opinion. Therefore, this does relate to terministic screens except from a sociological standpoint. However, one more way t relates is through genre.
Genre is prevalent in my mind as I take a Genre c;ass concerning film noir. These past weeks, we have went over the concept of genre and how it relates in writing. It is my opinion that in fact race is similar to genre. A term used to classify a certain group based on many different variations just as genre does in writing or in movies. This doesn't justify the use of race and its terms it just proves that there is a relation. I hate the use of racial slurs whether with a negative connotation or even as a term of classification. Although, I do agree that race does need to have some sort of identification it can be through a different source instead of outdated racial terms.
1 comment:
This is a very interesting post because I too am from Miami, and am hispanic. I feel a similar discomfort that the author of this post feels and am not black. "In Miami, there are people who are black yet don't identify with the society's concept of Black but instead with being Hispanic or of foreign descent. The idea that we let a term represent such an ambiguous meaning is in fact wrong in my opinion". My parents are hispanic, my grandfather is Chinese but I identify as Venezuelan, because my mother grew up there (but was not born there). To anglo people I am always "something else" or "mexican" and to non-anglo people I am white. These assumptions always upset me because they assume so much about who I am. I don't mind the physical implications because I am what I am, appearance wise but what bothers me are the social assumptions. This post shined a new light on this text for me because I focused mainly on language.
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