Poughkeepsie Archives - The Race Card Project

Damn Mom, You’re Right. I’m sorry.

May 12, 2024May 12, 2024 David Pham, identity, mom, NY, Poughkeepsie, right, soldiers, sorry, Vietnam War

David Pham
Poughkeepsie, NY

When I was young, my mom told me a macabre anecdote about the Vietnam War. She remembered that American soldiers would go through villages in search of Vietcong. As they went through, they would ask villagers in English if they were indeed Vietcong or not. Some villagers, though they did not know English and therefore could not understand, would nod anyway. They were shot on the spot. When my mom told me this story, I refused to believe it. I thought it was obvious that American soldiers would know better than to ask villagers if they were Vietcong because they did not speak English, so it would be pointless. This was never in any of the history textbooks in school, so, of course, I thought back then, the story was obviously not true. Now, after unpacking this memory, I feel ashamed to have questioned my mom’s lived experience and how I internalized so much oppression as a child.

Based on this memory, I define race as the self-constructed, fluid identity that is heavily influenced by outside agents such as people (family, friends, teachers), significant personal events, or the media (in its portrayal, or lack thereof, of racial/cultural images on the television, on the Internet or in textbooks). Race goes far beyond physical appearance. Though race can certainly be ascribed through institutional agents such as the government, race is not fixated but is, instead, robust and moldable in that it is based on self-exploration over time. Only when confronted by oppression does race take on a collective identity (rife with stereotypes), making it seem fixated and ascribed by an oppressive agent when it really is not. Those who are confident in their own racial/cultural/ethnic identity can break free of the oppressor stranglehold and take part in re-humanizing both the oppressor and oppressed. Yet, it takes many years for this to happen after considerable mental and physical toll, reflection and action.

Racism tore me away from my heritage and culture and placed me in this liminal space between my own Vietnamese culture and the American culture I strove for. This was why I questioned my mom’s lived experience. As someone who was striving to be White, I was stunned to hear an account so unflattering of a group in which I wanted membership. Racism, as a tool of oppression, therefore displaces people from their heritage, and from personal experience, and it put me into a cultural/racial/ethnic limbo¬. What is most insidious about racism is that it works in covert ways, and I, for one, was not conscious of my own cultural/racial/ethnic displacement until I entered college. Racism can also devastatingly foster horizontal violence between targeted groups and often times within a racial group to the benefit of the oppressor group. Such was the case when I was forced into my danger zone when I was in a discussion with a fellow AAPI person who said he supported the model minority myth. Racism also drove me to search, depend on, and embrace social capital that would help me succeed in a White-dominated world (such as looking for cheap SAT classes to take). Simultaneously, I devalued my own cultural capital because it did not give me the necessary tools to succeed (choosing to take SAT classes instead of classes which could have developed my Vietnamese writing skills). And so, I clearly remember being jealous of those who had more access to such social capital because it meant they could be more successful than me.

You’re Native American? Well, how much?

March 20, 2018March 20, 2018 angry, CA, identity, indigenous, Kaitlin Reed, Kim Anderson, Klamath River, Native American, NY, Pocahontas, Poughkeepsie, racial heritage, salmon, sexual conquest, validation, Yurok Indian

Kaitlin Reed,
Poughkeepsie, NY.

I am a Yurok Indian. We are the salmon people and my ancestors have lived by the Klamath River in northern California since time began. But after centuries of continual sexual conquest against Native American women, I am not the color of Pocahontas. That’s right, I’m white-skinned and Indian. This hasn’t always been easy to come to terms with. The words of classmates in the public school district still buzz in my head:
“But you look white.” “Well, how much?” “Yeah, but you’re not, like, a real Indian.”

I remember feeling angry. I didn’t know who I was angry with or why. Now I know that I just wanted validation. My people have historically been marginalized by Euro-American institutions; our land stolen; our people murdered and raped. But I am continually told I am white and that I benefit from these institutions. I feel as if I look like the other team, and when I say different I am not taken seriously. The words of Kim Anderson, an indigenous scholar who has also struggled with a multiracial Native American and white identity, have helped me; she writes, “part of being Native is feeling like we aren’t!” (27).

To me, racism is a systemic interchange of power relationships predicated on a socially constructed racial hierarchy, but it is far more complicated than ‘white’ versus ‘black’ or even ‘everybody else’ for that matter. A deeper understanding of racism must incorporate how hierarchies play out within and between disenfranchised groups of people and those who opt to identify as people of color. Denying someone their identity is racism; invalidating and identity is racism. There is importance in the concept of race regardless of whether it is ‘real’ or not because within our racially stratified society it is a major factor in one’s self-identification and how people come to make sense of the world.

Whiteness is ace up your sleeve

June 11, 2015 ace, black folks, Colette, lucky, NY, Poughkeepsie, white folks, whiteness

Colette,
Poughkeepsie, NY.

As I was getting ready to upload my own statement about race, I noticed a posting that stated “(B)lacks are a one dimensional thinking bunch” who participate in race baiting. I was tempting to reply, “White people are a one dimensional barrel of fools heavily invested in believing that race doesn’t matter and racism no longer exists.” But I know this not to be true (although certainly true in the case of the person who posted that). White folks can be allies and fierce anti-racist workers. However, the difference between an ally and a quasi ally is whether or not a White person uses their Whiteness as the ace up their sleeve when they realize they are about to lose a hand in an important game. Even when tempted and their lives are on the line, do they reach up their sleeves to find that little car waiting for them at the time that it matters most?

“Not seeing” race is a privilege!

June 9, 2014 Amanda Feinman, color blindness, disadvantage, liberal, NY, Poughkeepsie, privilege, Race, social

Amanda Feinman
Poughkeepsie, NY

Race is a social category, which is given meaning by institutional and cultural systems of advantage of disadvantage. Race is significant in light of these conferred and withheld advantages: it continues to dictate the distribution of resources; it impacts access to education, healthcare, employment, and other areas of the public sphere; and it affects internalized perceptions of ourselves and others. Racism is any action, project, or redistribution of resources that works to reproduce the dominant racial power structure. This occurs on the level of individual actors, groups, institutions, and societally.

Despite normative liberal notions that we are in an era of equal treatment – of “post-racism,” or “color-blindness” – race continues to hold societal weight. To act and think under any kind of “color-blind” framework is oppressive, because it erases the historical, social, and political importance of race as a constructed category. As a white person who was brought up in a “liberal” ideological environment, I was taught from a young age that race shouldn’t matter, and that in order to achieve fairness we should not consider it. Though this advice may be well-intentioned, it is dangerous. To operate under a framework that “doesn’t see” race at all – and, consequently, “doesn’t see” the systemic advantages conferred and denied on the basis of race – is an exercise of privilege.

We all bleed, we all hurt

May 28, 2014 biological, bleed, Characteristics, genetics, hurt, Naadu Addico, NY, physical difference, Poughkeepsie

Naadu Addico
Poughkeepsie, NY

Physical differences caused by a person’s genetic makeup cannot have large effects on a person’s social interaction. It is the way people react to and interpret these biological characteristics that affect a person’s social interactions. For instance, a tall boy’s height does not have any relevance to him until he realizes people constantly ask him if he plays basketball. This physical manifestation of his genetics was never abnormal to him until others continuously pointed it out. In my opinion, this same principle applies to race. Race is a physical manifestation of a person’s biological lineage that means very little, if anything, until people begin attaching certain connotations and expectations based on it. Unfortunately, in our current society, many people subconsciously and consciously allow a person’s race to shape their personal beliefs of a certain group of people.

Even though I believe that most, if not all, people have inherent biases based on many physical characteristics of a person, a bias is not racist until it is acted upon. If a person explicitly takes action against another person, regardless of the degree, solely based on a person’s race, that action is racist. In my personal life, according to my definition of racism, I believe I have experienced some racist acts from people of all backgrounds. Simply because of my race, when shopping I have been followed around by someone of my own race. Simply because of my race, a mistake made out of ignorance has been misconstrued as pure stupidity. I have seen the surprise on people’s face after finding out my home neighborhood because “[I am] not like ‘them’.” Overall, I have learned that the physiological differences regarding race are minimal while the social differences created due to ignorance cause major divisions between people who would otherwise be equal.

Right when I almost forget: Race

March 19, 2014 aesthetic, forget, microcosm, Muderi Aradi, NY, Poughkeepsie, Race

Muderi Aradi
Poughkeepsie, NY

Race to me is how authorities in an environment define aesthetic population differences, in ignorance to the vast continuum of intermediates that may lie outside of the smaller environment. Knowledge or acknowledgement of these intermediates would immediately add a confusion and invalidation to the narrow definitions. In a similar way, knowledge or acknowledgment of truths about vast exceptions to constructed racial stereotypes would also breach racial constructions. In slightly different words, it is a small world organizational feature that lacks a total data that would then immediately invalidate it.
Racism to me is any categorically assumptive tool that can devalue, discredit and/or eventually dehumanizes the labeled racial subject based on these hand-made definitions. In present-day America it takes the form of a national and inner-personal consciousness that places an automatic, mindless favor towards this attitude.

In my life racism is something that I am lucky to be able to forget about at times, but when it appears it feels more demoralizing than it would if I were constantly bombarded with it. My racial encounters have been particular to my extreme minority status as an ethnic African in predominantly white populations; subtle, indirect, and hard to fully comprehend past emotional response upon occurrence. From the start of elementary school, I felt structural isolation in a form of exceptionalism due to my teachers’ (shows) of surprise at my academic performance as a minority. A defining example was when I got 100% on a vocabulary test in fifth grade, and my teacher lauded, “You must have worked very hard!” In reality, I had not worked that hard at all to earn the good grade, and I perceived her disrespectful attribution of labor over intelligence. Neighbors, and parents of my close friends, would eventually repeat in this peculiar attribution. Many similar subtle racist events pervaded my experiences and those of my first generation family. I view these many events as a microcosm of how structural racism eventually conquers a group in society, and in this way view the success of structural racism as a composite of many small accumulating parts. I also perceive the most detrimental effects of racism in the gray area of ambiguity, in wondering whether my father, mother, brother or myself would have been better (and in what ways) if the proverbial fifth grade teacher hadn’t projected that we “worked very hard”.

Individual or systemic, racism always matters.

March 19, 2014 colonial ancestry, Giselle Sanchez Huerta, NY, Poughkeepsie, privilege, structural power, systemic, Vassar

Giselle Sanchez Huerta
Poughkeepsie, NY

Race is a concept that continues privilege, structural power, and inequitable distribution of resources based on phenotypes/ sets of observable characteristics. Race is a social construct, meaning that it was created through social interactions. Society and its people built the concept and continue to give it meaning. That is not to say that it is meaningless, because of the profound affects it has on social structure and interpersonal experiences. The concept of race shifts its boundaries throughout history to continually maintain structures of power on many levels. Racism is “a system of advantage based on race” (Tatum). This means that any action that does not fight the power dynamics and privileging of a certain race, is a racist act. By not fighting against racism, the power structure is reinforced.

Race and racism have played a big role in my life, as Latina womyn of indigenous and colonial ancestry. My initial exposures to racism let me see that in society, whiteness is centered and asserted as superior, and that continues to be true. Race plays a factor in who I surround myself with, never being with many white people at once. In institutions, I have seen racial projects as an effort to seem inclusive of students of color, but once here, I have noticed the lack of resources for our community. In that, institutional racism continues to push against cultivating leaders of color and pushes for white leadership. The centering of whiteness as dominant continues to show racism on individual and systemic levels. I continue to think about race in the spaces I try to build at Vassar, ones the celebrate our history and accentuate our voices.