Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"?
Witchfire@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Gender is mutable, race isn’t
Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"?
Witchfire@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Gender is mutable, race isn’t
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I am not saying they are equal, but I don’t understand the difference since gender and race are both social constructs that start with physical differences.
amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
gender identity has nothing to do with physical appearance. it has to do with what you identify as. a Black trans woman can choose to transition socially but can’t “transition” into being white. she’d have to do a body transplant for that since race is strictly based on perceived phenotype not self-identification. the reason why whites can’t transition races is because the racial oppression only goes one way, like a pyramid. white people invented the racial caste system so it’d be impossible for us to oppress ourselves
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m thinking of a situation where someone can easily pass as either race depending on context and they might change their identity based on finding out new information. Not altering their skin color or even their behavior necessarily, just how they identify.
Also, in the US race for the census and other federal data collection is based on self-identification and has been for well over a decade. A lot of people with mixed ancestry often choose one as the race they identify with based on social perceptions, like choosing to identify as black despite having a white parent where they could be both white and black because of social pressures. Or their parent raises them to identify as white because they don’t want their kid to suffer from racial oppression .
That just seems comparable as something that is imposed on someone, isn’t always accurate, has social pressure to go with first impressions, and a negative response to someone choosing how they want to identify.
Note: This does not include Rachel Dolzal (sp) who changed the color of her skin, that was definitely someone who was pretending using blackface.
amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
seems like you’re confusing ethnicity and race. even if biracial Black people identify as white because of having a white parent (anti-Blackness) that doesn’t change the fact they will continue experiencing racism for being Black. race is all about first impressions because it was meant to be a cognitive model for white people to reduce our guilt for enslaving Black people.