Both Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau discuss blended families in their essays. And yet, the tones they use to discuss such familial structures, and the sociological perspective each has on the experience of living in these kinds of households, are quite distinct.
1. Please find three quotes from each essay that demonstrate the difference in tone that the authors use to discuss mixed/interracial/blended families. Pay very close attention to word choice, looking at adjectives and adverbs in addition to verbs and nouns that may be communicating tone or stance on a subtle level.
2. Then, integrating these quotes into your own words, explain what you think the major difference is between each author's ideology when it comes to the notion of growing up in a blended family household.
**
EXTRA CREDIT:
3. If you are in the noon class, please post the brief in-class writing you wrote Wednesday in class, comparing the rhetoric of Emily Raboteau and Das Racist. I want the other class to see what you came up with.
OR
If you are in the 11AM class, take a look at what the other class wrote. It turns out that the way we went about analyzing the video was all wrong. In the noon class, we analyzed the lyrics first, as Philip had suggested, and it did make a major difference in the kind of cultural analysis we were able to make. We also looked at a different video, "Chicken and Meat" and wrote solo instead of in groups. If you want extra credit, take a look at this article that Das Racist wrote on their genre and discuss, in a few sentences, why they choose the somewhat ridiculous expression of music videos and hip hop when, as this article suggests, they have the ability to use a more straightforward form of articulation instead.
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ReplyDeleteDas Racists seems to go about things in a light hearted manner utilizing metaphors, and a smooth flow. When discussing racial profiling, they state "Mind the gap, people in the street eating chicken and meat." The gap refers to the broad mixture of race that all minorities fall into. Although Raboteau is discussing the synonymous topic of racial profiling, she conveys her message via a different method by stating "This what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question. This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat." She gives her own personal account of racial profiling in a concise, austere manner.
ReplyDelete-Special K
in Emily Raboteau's stiry, she utilizes a more personal approach by narrating her first time and the experience she went through "to get racially profiled" while das racist on the other hand uses a more generalized manner by referring to "domincans and indians" and the "chicken and meat" that could represent many races and explaining the constant/continuos racial profiling of minorities as a group by "officers and overseers" and they wonder "officer, officer, why put me in a coffin" while one reflects a more personal, self reflecting approach, the other uses a generalized way that is relatable to many.
ReplyDeleteare we supposed to reply to this post with our work?
ReplyDelete“Searching for Zion”
ReplyDelete• “It means Fuck you,” I wanted to say, not because they’d stripped me of my dignity, but because they’d shoved my face into my own rootlessness”.
• “Being different was, for both of us, a source of pride and, I’m ashamed to say, enabled us to hold everyone else in slight disdain”
• “I didn’t fit in. I looked different from the white kids, though I didn’t exactly look black”.
“Relations”
• “When we were young, my sister and I had two baby dolls that were exactly alike in every way except that one was white and one was black.”
• “Without denying that blacks and whites remain largely segregated and disturbingly polarized, and without denying that black culture is a distinct culture
• “My doll's proper name was Susannah, but her common name, the name I used more often, and the name my entire family used, was Black Doll.
By examining these quotes I can see some differences between the two writers, how their tone is different when talking about race and the differences as individuals. Eula Biss, as great of a writing she might be, she is a white American writer, she may study all her life about racism she would never be able to reach a certain understanding of how Emily feels. Biss writes with knowledge, educated facts, and preciseness. For example, “Without denying that blacks and whites remain largely segregated and disturbingly polarized, and without denying that black culture is a distinct culture”, that is true. There is no emotion in that quote what so ever, she is simply stating her opinion that the white and black culture are segregated until today. Emily on the other is half black, being black one have to deal with the ignorance of the people around you, but not only that, Emily is only half black. She doesn’t fully belong to one thing to another. This fact shows up in her writing, “It means Fuck you,” I wanted to say, not because they’d stripped me of my dignity, but because they’d shoved my face into my own rootlessness”, she does not care that they violated her dignity, because most people would care, but she is rather angry because this is being done to her because she unable tell them what she is.
As a young girl, Biss played with a black doll whose name is Susannah but Biss rather call her as Black Doll. This is very interesting because the color black somehow in history of this country became the word of identifier for a thing or human being. A white doll would never ever be called White Doll, even if the girl who owns the doll was black. To African Americans, the color white is rarely a distinguisher of a person, but it does happen, though not as often as the word black would be use.
In Raboteau’s text, “Searching for Zion” and in Biss’ “Relations” both deal with mixed races in their lives and consequently the views others have about their mixed cultures; the difference between how people react to this is that Raboteau uses concise statements to bring out the harshness others make when judging her racial diversity and Biss uses longer and more complicated syntax along with a detached story about racial mixing to suggest that integrated races could happen.
ReplyDeleteRaboteau uses concise statements to bring out the harsh nature that outsiders put on her when they observe her cultural inconsistency; further use of concise statements help support the fact that she too has taken on the hostility put on her because of her race. Raboteau starts her essay when she is at the airport to visit her friend in Israel and is being instigated by the security workers. This however, is the not correct sequence of the story: reading on, it is seen that Raboteau backs her story up to introduce her history and then back through the scene that is described in the beginning. This is probably done to implant into her readers the cut throat and dry attitude that the security workers have about her mixed culture. The harshness is picked up in the choppy statements they demand from her like: “’This!’ They stabbed at my middle name, which is Ishem. ‘What is the meaning of this name?’” The format that Raboteau puts their conversation in shows a quick paced conversation:
“It sounds Arabic.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you speak Arabic?”
“I know better than to try.”
“What do you mean?”
“No, I don’t speak Arabic.”
“What are your origins?”
The conversation is very dry and gives the reader an idea that Raboteau sees people as quick to judge just as she was quick to portray this idea in her essay. She goes further in this essay to show that these ideas have now been projected onto her. She does this by using short sentences as transitions in her life. This happens with her tying herself to her heritage to show she has origins somewhere. She transitions from talking about the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina to saying “I published a book and was made a professor, like my father,” mentioning the commonality to her father in an almost haphazard way. Perhaps she feels that she must do this because she has always been forced to associate herself to the people and situations that happened before her. The use of the short sentence does not speak of the work and time that she put into writing this book and becoming a professor because society doesn’t care about that. As projected initially by the airplane security guards and rearticulated by her in this statement, people only care about where people came from.
Biss also manipulates her sentence structure in “Relations”, but she uses it to suggest that integration on races is possible. Biss knows for sure that this is possible, but since to an audience this idea is discomforting she uses her sentence structure to slowly convince her readers of this idea. The first sentence she writes slowly brings a reader into the topic of mixed races: “In New York City, in the spring of 1999, a story hit the newspapers of a Long Island woman who had given birth to twins--one white and one black.” The first phrase examined in the text is “In New York City.” Many people live in New York City; it is a real place and is usually acceptable to people. Biss innocently creeps forward: “In the spring of 1999.” 1999 was a good year, the reader has been placed in an area they are familiar about, and even the idea of it being spring helps to lighten this idea because of the conations of life and newness. Since these short phrases bring the reader into a peaceful and accepting mind set, she creeps higher towards the subject by saying: “A story hit the newspapers of a Long Island woman who had given birth to twins.” This phrase does not throw the reader off guard. Newspapers usually do publish strange births that happen and they are usually light, sweet stories. Biss uses this psychology of her readers to implement what she wishes to discuss. Since she places the phrase “One white and one black” after hyphens, it shows awareness that this is a bizarre situation that could be unsettling. However, because of the prior sentences that promote normalcy the reader is suggested to face this reality and see that it is possible and okay.
ReplyDeleteBiss uses more long sentences to convince her readers that the integration of races can happen. By having more than one clause when Biss states “If both babies had been white, I doubt the story would have become the parable it became--playing out in the newspapers over the next few years as an epic tale of blood and belonging,” in one sentence, she is purposely extending the length of her sentences. The extension of sentence length allows the concept she is speaking of to be more complex which makes sense because she is speaking about the discomfort of integrating races. The fact that she is able to approach this topic with such extensive syntax serves as a pragmatic work on her part to show she is willing to face mixing races because it is possible and her readers are being convinced to take her stance.
It is towards the end of Biss’ essay, after she has had time to persuade her audience towards her racial beliefs that she can unveil the white mother a little more. “‘He has two mothers,’ the Long Island woman said of the black baby to whom she gave birth, in a brazen refusal of the very terms in which her story was being told,” Biss says and then continues to share how the white mother did not want to appear to give her son away because he was black. Biss adds more detail and context of the mother within the same sentence to allow the reader to see the complexity of this situation. It has already been established that the mother loves both of the children she gave birth to, but because of racial stigmatisms and the principal fact that the black baby was meant for a black couple this situation becomes sticky. Biss places multiple clauses in her sentences to depict this complex situation and by doing so persuades the reader that racial blending is possible and should be accepted.
While Raboteau and Biss use syntax differently in their texts, it is used to show the reader their own experiences with multiple cultures. It also projects to the reader what they have taken from these experiences where for Raboteau it shows the racial categories she was forced to not be in since here origins where so diverse and for Biss she uses the newspaper story mentioned above to express how she feels and was taught about race.
* Extra credit: I feel that Das Racist believes that rappers -or mere musicians, acknowledging their hate for genre titles- start off with music that is not necessarily what they want to do, but familiar to the world. As they gain acceptance because of their familiar music and get popular they form concrete fans and are able to change their music and image and still be accepted for the most part. Das Racist probably initially creates funky music they want to play because they are out to send a message, they are not seeking approval from the world. They already have harsh things to say and there is no use being nice about it first.
ReplyDeleteSearching For Zion:
ReplyDelete• “Answer the question then! What are your origins?”
What else was I supposed to say?
“A sperm and an egg,” I snapped.
• When they didn’t find any, they focused on my tattoo, a Japanese character which means different, precious, unique. …“What does it mean?” he asked. This was the first time I’d ever been racially profiled, not that the experience would have been any less humiliating had it been my five hundredth. “It means Fuck you,” I wanted to say, not because they’d stripped me of my dignity, but because they’d shoved my face into my own rootlessness. I have never felt more black in my life than I did when I was mistaken for an Arab.
• I’m glad I came here,” I answered, “but I miss black people.”
I was surprised to hear myself say it, but I realized it was true. With the exception of Maine, I’d never traveled to a place without black people.
“There are black people here, silly,” Tamar said. “You’re not the only one.”
“Where are they?”
“All over.”
“Really?” Where were they hiding? I hadn’t seen them.
“Sure. The Falashas.”
Relations:
• The white doll was my sister's and the black doll was mine. My doll's proper name was Susannah, but her common name, the name I used more often, and the name my entire family used, was Black Doll.
• "Maybe we love our dolls because we can't love ourselves," a friend of mine--an artist who made drawings of dolls missing legs or arms or eyes that all looked, somehow, eerily like her--once suggested. Perhaps this is the essential truth behind why we make effigies. And maybe this is why we tend to believe that children should have dolls that look like them, or at least that look like who they might eventually become.
• Why should I have been surprised, and somewhat hurt, when the mask was finished, to see that my face had become unmistakably African? My eyes were still almond shaped, as they are, but my cheekbones were higher, my nose was flatter and wider, and my lips were fuller. Still, my face was in that face, I could see it there, especially in the mouth.
Authors Differences and Similarities:
ReplyDeleteThe difference between each other is having a personal experience where someone has gone through discrimination for color and look. As the other author explains of how the perspective of child toys may lead on to make assumptions of color making it seems either “bad or good”. Both authors have a relation towards what have occurred in their lives. Both authors had denied or didn’t want to admit how unique they were. With the quote that Emily mentions,
“I’m glad I came here,” I answered, “but I miss black people.”
I was surprised to hear myself say it, but I realized it was true. With the exception of Maine, I’d never traveled to a place without black people.
“There are black people here, silly,” Tamar said. “You’re not the only one.”
“Where are they?”
“All over.”
“Really?” Where were they hiding? I hadn’t seen them.
“Sure. The Falashas.”
Realizing at the very end, “You don’t know what you have until its gone” is what Emily realized. With Eula she mentions in her story how the character doesn’t see what she truly is until she is being made into a sculpture. Eula says,
“Why should I have been surprised, and somewhat hurt, when the mask was finished, to see that my face had become unmistakably African? My eyes were still almond shaped, as they are, but my cheekbones were higher, my nose was flatter and wider, and my lips were fuller. Still, my face was in that face, I could see it there, especially in the mouth.”
Her realization became once she had grown up, and by people in a way telling her or letting her know by the sculpture.
Although both authors have wrote in a similar way describing discriminations. The author Emily lets someone know they have been discriminated, while Eula uses children to describe the “differences” they know between white and black.
***Extra Credit:
ReplyDeleteRacially profiled. As Emily has mentioned, “This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question.” With this excerpt, Das Racists’ lyrics, “Find the gap, mind the gap,” is where Emily concludes in. The metaphors that are brought up in Das Racists have a message within the lyrics and words on the page. As you view and listen to lyrics carefully. It is substantial that meanings are that no matter what race you, “Which one’s Dominican, Wait who’s the Indian” has a matter of racial profiling. With mentioning over and over “bridge the gap”, the gap signifying to let everyone stop being profiled or at least discriminated by the looks that someone has. Leaning on with Das Racists they mention foods, cameras, and other sorts of things, which makes people think. People may say, “yea I eat that, I use that” hey there’s a lot of things that people use and eat that are the same whether what culture, race, color, skin you are, we all are alike. Skin doesn’t signify anything it’s a color a unique color, but inside we all have the same. Having a heart and the rest of what makes us, US.
-- Dianita
Emily quote Looking for Zion:
ReplyDelete“I was black. Well, I was half black, but in a land where one must be one thing or the other, that was enough to set me apart.”
This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question. This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat.
Of course, it was ridiculous for me to identify Ethiopian Jews as my kinsmen just because their skin appeared to be black, and for me to think they were black just because they appeared to be second-class citizens.
I have never felt more black in my life than I did when I was mistaken for an Arab.
Eula Biss Relations:
But even odd facts like this took on the sheen of metaphor, pointing, for those of us who were looking, to further evidence of a systematic failure of any number of services to reach black people intact, in the form in which they are typically enjoyed by white people.
My cousin and I grew up on opposite sides of the country, her in Oakland, California and me in upstate New York, but we both found ourselves in New York City in our twenties, and we shared an apartment in Brooklyn for a year. When I moved to New York I barely knew my cousin, but I was comforted by the idea that she was family.
Perhaps my inability to pass is part of why I feel so trapped within my identity as a white woman. That identity does not feel chosen by me as much as it feels grudgingly accepted
It isn't easy to accept a slaveholder and an Indian-killer as a grandfather, and it isn't easy to accept the legacy of whiteness as an identity. It is an identity that carries a heavy burden of guilt without fostering a true understanding of the painfulness and the costs of complicity.
One of the differences between Eula and Emily is their race. Eula is a white woman and Emily is half Black and half white. Both authors have frustrated with their Identity because they are treated differently. It seems odd but Eula is doesn’t like the fact that she was treat differently when she applied for housing, even though it was to her advantage. “When it became clear to me, for instance, that my landlady was looking for a "nice" tenant, I did not inform her that if she was under the impression I was white, she should at least know I was not nice” Eula pointed out one of the advantages that she has just because her skin color is white. On the other hand in “Searching for Zion”, Emily uses a harsher tone to describe the discriminations that she have to face in her daily life, “This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question. This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat”. Just because of her color, not even full Black, she was being treated as a threat at the airport, she was left in between the border of the white and the black race and it doesn’t seems like neither side is accepting her because she doesn’t look black enough and it’s obvious she doesn’t look like. Even though the author doesn’t think the United States is her home, she hope to search for “Zion” just like how the Beta Israelis look for Zion in Jerusalem.
Mr.T
I believe in bith there is some comic way that they put in their message. The use of comedy like "chicken and meat" and "She's a cancer". They both give off the kind ofhumor feel but but neither one of them were really being funny aboout what they wanted to portray. When she says "I never felt more black in my life than I did when I was mistaken for a Arab." This reminded me of "the gap" in the song. Even though she was mistaken for an AArab she felt black. Maybe because she was realizing what other ethnicities go through. It doesn't matter what you are u will all fall into the gap of of being different. That as minorities we all fall into this gap and it just isn't with black people. So we should stop saying that us black people are constantly being treated in a different way. We should also look at the other minorities and what they go through on daily basis as well.
ReplyDelete-Meeshelay
the article was chosen because everyone listens to music!!! i understood their whole thinking process and though it was a great way to express racism!
ReplyDelete-TURBO
From the essay: Searching For Zion
ReplyDelete“Answer the question then! What are your origins?”
What else was I supposed to say?
“A sperm and an egg,” I snapped.
“It means Fuck you,” I wanted to say, not because they’d stripped me of my dignity, but because they’d shoved my face into my own rootlessness”.
“I’m glad I came here,” I answered, “but I miss black people.”
From the essay: Relations
“When we were young, my sister and I had two baby dolls that were exactly alike in every way except that one was white and one was black.”
“City, in the spring of 1999, a story hit the newspapers of a Long Island woman who had given birth to twins--one white and one black.”
“Eventually, he marked both White and Black.”
Both authors obviously have strong opinions on race. Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau each have a unique writing style and each author express their opinions in their own way. I feel the major difference between them is that Emily used more of a personal type of writing while Eula used a more factual type. They are both excellent writers, though Emily seems to be more passionate in her writing. She is half black and has firsthand experience with the racism people like her receive. She is not fully black nor fully white therefore leaving her in a position where she is not whole in way. Eula used more facts and her writing was not as passionate as Emily’s.
No Relation:
ReplyDelete• The woman and her husband were white and the black baby was not theirs, at least not biologically.
• If both the babies had been white, I might have felt that the white woman was entitled to keep them both, no matter whom they were related to.
• As a child, my cousin worried that her mother loved her brother more because he was not as brown as her. Even so, her skin is light enough to "pass."
Searching for Zion:
• Being different was, for both of us, a source of pride and, I’m ashamed to say, enabled us to hold everyone else in slight disdain
• This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question. This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat
• As a consequence of growing up half black in a nation divided along unhealthy racial lines, I had never felt at home in the United States.
After reviewing and selecting these quotes I believe the difference between these two authors were experience. Eula Biss clarified her opinion of mixed families by acknowledging of what she read or observed as a grown up, “If both the babies had been white, I might have felt that the white woman was entitled to keep them both, no matter whom they were related to. This quote did not come from her experiencing it, it came from another family and she addressed it by giving her own personal opinion. Whereas Emily Raboteau expressed her views of mixed by going through the experiences personally, “As a consequence of growing up half black in a nation divided along unhealthy racial lines, I had never felt at home in the United States.” Emily could not be accepted being half black due to how citizens around her accepted it. She offered personal experiences which drew a line of how different Biss and she are.
Extra Credit:
I believe Das Racist chooses the ridiculous expression of music videos and hip hop because they want to draw a line between being racially profiled, no matter what race you may be African American, Caucasian or Indian. As comparison to what Emily Raboteau went through by being proclaimed of a race that she “looked like” put her difficult situations that limited her to doing things. Das Racist wants to put that to and end by using metaphors within their lyrics to get people thinking that no matter what race or you are, we all as a people do the same thing which makes us no different.
Extra Credit:
ReplyDeleteI think that Das Racists knows that humor is a good way of connecting to an audience. They use the sarcastic and humoral approach that this generation is so accustomed to. Das Racists knows that they would be received by a bigger audience so they use this rhetoric to connect. We all know about the racial disparities in America and when we hear others examining and exposing it, we are able to understand where they are coming from and what they mean. This group is not afraid of pissing people off, like Eminem, they have a message and the best way in my opinion is just to state it.They are saying that though different and from different cultures, everyone has similarities that connect us. Emily Raboteau talks too about the different cultures and how they blend. She speaks about finding ones place and being able to relate to others. She goes about her message in a more direct way. I personally could connect with her, however, I could see how it could be harder for others to see her point of view or see how the message applies to them if they don't think of themselves as blended or bi-racial.
Searching for Zion
ReplyDelete"The security personnel of El Al Airlines descended upon me at Newark International Airport like a flock of vultures"
'It means Fuck you'
The entire interrogation dialogue.
Relations
"The precise sameness of these dolls, so obviously cast from one mold in two different colors of plastic, convinced me that they were, like us, sisters."
"Maybe we love our dolls because we can't love ourselves."
Here her identity became even more ambiguous. Walking home through the park after dark one night, my cousin passed a black man who nodded at her and said, "Mmm-hmmm, you're a bad-ass white girl."
Emily Raboteau has more of a rebellious attitude compared to Emily Biss. I thought it was hilarious when she said her friend was a Cancer. I can see myself doing this during an interrogation. Unfortunately it didn't end well for her. Eula Biss has more of a meek demeanor. She does an excellent job of creating the ambiguity of who is black and who isn't. Like when they thought her cousin was black in Oakland, but not in New York. It also seems like she accepted who she was more than Raboteau.
When the airport run-in occurs, however, Raboteau realizes what is going on and decides to kind of joke her way through her true emotions, which is probably disgust and hatred. Biss uses long, convoluted sentences to show the blending of races, while Raboteau uses concise statements to prove a point. The authors' different syntax helps distinguish their writing from each other.
Raboteau ties racism in to her personal life by explaining her many visits to Israel. Each time she goes to visit she encounters different types of racism. She explains that when the attack on the twin towers occurred her and her friend walked around ground zero. She expressed that she couldn’t believe that happened here and her friend explained that things like that happen all the time in other parts of the world. Her search for black people in the middle east was the reason for all her visits and exploring. She explains how she once was racially profiled and strip searched at the airport on her first visit to Israel. She states that she of being a mixed race one always sticks out more than others in her case it is her being black.
ReplyDelete-Tapatio87
Comparing the two authors, I felt like Eula Biss was more concerned about the cultural aspect of a person's identity as opposed to Emily Raboteau, who seemed to favor race as a way to identify someone. Biss mentions that scientists think "there is no biological basis for what we call race," showing her idea that race is not what sets us apart from each other. Her problem with the white woman raising a black child was not that the kid would feel uncomfortable having a white family, but he would be "robbed of a certain amount of cultural identity." Biss believed it was necessary for the boy to know about his culture so he wouldn't feel out of place growing up. Later on she commented on her childhood and how she called her doll "Black Doll," now embarrassed about "[reducing the] doll...to her race." This again demonstrates the initial point of Biss not being comfortable with using race to identify someone.
ReplyDeleteEmily Raboteau, however, feels race is mostly what people are reduced to. She showed frustration at this problem when she described how mixed race had made her “a perpetual unanswered question.” In other words, her identity was questionable because “[her] mother [was] white and [her] father [was] black.” The idea of being defined by her race was humiliating to Raboteau, as she demonstrated when the people at the airport had “shoved [her] face into [her] own rootlessness.” She was “undefinable” in her opinion because her race was not homogeneous.
-SRam
I feel like an unknown quantity, my cousin remarked at some point when we live together (Biss)
ReplyDeleteI come from people who have learnt not to trust the government (Biss)
…. Some collective understanding that we are both, white and black, damaged and reduced, and morally undermined by increasingly subtle systems or racial oppression and racial privilege (Biss)
This is what my mixed race has made me, a perpetual unanswered question (Rabboteau)
I couldn’t shake the feeling that her choice to be Israeli had made my best friend white. (Raboteau)
Thinking about this, I began to feel my terrible whiteness and I was ashamed. (Raboteau)
Emily Raboteau represents the issue of growing up in a blended household as a major conflict in her life. Emily feels lost and she feels that her “mixed race has made a perpetual unanswered question” and she is constantly in the battle to figure out who she is really is, and how her “terrible whiteness” impacts her life. Raboteau’s ideology of being mixed and growing up in an interracial home is one that causes this internal conflict in her life. She takes a more personal, self reflecting approach by inviting her audience into her personal journey with this concept.
Eula Biss on the other hand, explores the journeys of other to describe and expose her points and opinions about being mixed and living in an inter-racial home. She utilizes her experience with her cousin who feels like an “unknown quantity”, the issue between the black and white mom, and the studies on Barbie to elaborate on her point. She utilizes the stories and experiences of these different people as a lens to understanding and explaining to her audience the ideology of living in an inter-racial house. Eula gains a “collective understanding that we are both, white and black, damaged and reduced, and morally undermined by increasingly subtle systems or racial oppression and racial privilege”. This is her explanation of what being inter-racial is. Her method to getting this understanding differs from Raboteau’s. While one uses a more personal method, the other uses her knowledge of others experiences.
- Rebel Flower
1)
ReplyDeleteBoth Emily Raboteau and Eula Bliss have pretty different tones but the underlying message is of racial mixing and the search for social identity. This can be captured quite well in Eula Bliss’s “Relations” talking about the woman that had given birth to ‘twins’ one that was white and one black and stated that, “… if that long island [white] woman had raised the black boy to whom she gave birth he might have been robbed of a certain amount of the cultural identity to which his skin would be assigned later in life, and might therefore find himself as an adult in an uncomfortable no-man’s-land between two racial identities.” This no-man’s-land, can not only be found countless times in “Relations,” but also in “Searching for Zion,” in a way Emily Raboteau is almost the very answer to Eula Bliss’s rhetoric argument, she is expressing the feeling of her unknown identity when she was being interrogated before going to Israel, “I felt caught in a look of that Abbott and Costello routine, “Who’s on first?” There was no place for me inside their rhetoric.” Also when Raboteau was referring to her race as, “A sperm and an egg,” shows the crisis of this no-man’s-land. Emily also goes into how she never truly felt more black in her life when she was mistakenly identified as an Arab because, “…they shoved my face into my own rootlessness.” When Bliss started talking about how the children in specific studies said that the white doll was, “nice” and that the black doll was, “bad,” I believe that when she then goes into talking about her landlady that she tries to combine her ‘whiteness,’ to her background which was because of her mother, African American, she states, “ When it became clear to me, for instance, that my landlady was looking for a “nice” tenant, I did not inform her that if she was under the impression I was white, she should at least know that I was not nice. In a way though Eula Bliss, I believe that she tries in her article to also show that no matter how mixed you are, you are a human, she expresses this talking about her favorite doll, “My own Black Doll…was loved until the black of her hair and the pink of her lips rubbed off,” I think she was trying to get at that the surface of the skin is always changing, getting older, and for some rich older people, it is getting ‘newer,’ the person in that suit will always be that person, slight changes but overall the same.
It seems like even though they both have the problem with racial identity and trying to find the place where they fit in to both of these authors have different experiences with the no-man’s-land, Eula Bliss’s article is almost like the beginning showing the more observant side to what Emily Raboteau is experiencing.
-Rachelle Star
EXTRA CREDIT
ReplyDeleteDas Racist and Emily Raboteau are both trying to decipher the race issue in two exactly different art forms. I believe that actually Das Racist is perhaps showing the melting pot that Emily Raboteau is in, “the gap,” as described in Das Racist’s rap. This gap I believe is not just a social or race or even religious gap, I believe that they are talking about the American gap, the mixing of almost every culture, talking about Hannah Montana and Santana (famous guitar player). As I started investigating the types of food that he describe, chicken, meat, bacon and even bananas, I tried to analyze what they were maybe trying to get at, and when in class we started talking about how that perhaps the bacon represents the Muslim religion because they do not ingest pork, and how no one eats bacon, no one understands them, but everyone eats “chicken and meat in the streets.” When thinking about chicken and meat I actually think about America, which leads into social classes, chicken maybe being referred to as a ‘poor’ meat, related to like KFC and Churches Chicken, which some people would relate to the African American stereotype. Meat would be more of a richer class, with steak and rib-eye. One thing that would make me curious about is when this rap was written, if it was after September 11th when really the racism of Arabs started to really come into America, they could possibly be separating themselves also from the meat, perhaps just saying “banana”, which then could also go into the issue of race with the color of the food, with Arabs being a little stereotyped of having more of an yellow tint, the meat would be dark skinned people and the chicken would be whites. There is really a lot of different places that Das Racist can be taken in this rap and Emily Raboteau is really the overall answer I believe to the emotions felt being in this American gap.
-Rachelle Star
Eula Biss
ReplyDelete*And perhaps this is why that Long Island woman went to court to fight for shared custody of a child who was very clearly, very publicly, no blood relation to her or her husband. It was an act of thievery, but it was also an act of love.
*"A well-ordered multiracial society," Randall Kennedy recently wrote, "ought to allow its members free entry into and exit from racial categories."
*They might be something less than family to each other, the black couple seemed to be suggesting, but they were more than strangers.
Emily Raboteau
*I wanted to say, not because they’d stripped me of my dignity, but because they’d shoved my face into my own rootlessness. I have never felt more black in my life than I did when I was mistaken for an Arab.
*She was Jewish. I was black. Well, I was half black, but in a land where one must be one thing or the other, that was enough to set me apart.
*As a consequence of growing up half black in a nation divided along unhealthy racial lines, I had never felt at home in the United States. I identified with the line James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time about the experience of black GIs returning from war only to discover the democracy they’d risked their lives to defend abroad continued to elude them at home: “Home! The very word begins to have a despairing and diabolical ring.”
Eula Biss’s tone in Relation is more optimistic than the one of Emily Raboteau in Searching for Zion. Biss discusses about the love between two different races that has happened by an accident while Raboteau focuses on her lost feeling in her identity because of her mixed race. Because Biss demonstrates how the bond of family can overcome the different skin color, her tone is more optimistic. Her word choices are simple therefore letting the audience understand her message easier. She doesn’t use difficult vocabulary, instead she uses words that are easy to understand thus explicitly expressing her thoughts. However, since Raboteau describes her “rootlessness”, her tone is somewhat depressing, though she puts jokes once in awhile in her text. Her diction is more difficult than Biss’s piece, which makes the audience pause and rethink about what they have just read. Compared to Relation, this story is more implicit because the audience have to pause and think about what she’s trying to say. Also the second quote shows that she is neither balck and white by writing “one must be one thing or the other, that was enough to se me apart.”
-Mihwacita
EXTRA CREDIT
ReplyDeleteWhen Emily Talks about racial profiling I feel her pain, especially in from the quote "This is what my mixed race has made me". Almost like she was yearning for a "Black cop" to rescue her from that torture she was going through. She also made a statement, "I have never felt more black in my life", almost like it was a sin for her to be black and she needed an "overseer" to to send some sort of protection to her, I could relate to her in that part but the only thing is that i was not stripped of my clothes. "What are you?" She thought she would be asked, but if the did i would have responded, a "chicken wing"
Both essays explain the struggle of being part of an interracial family and being racially profiled. Eula Biss is more light hearted in her essay using the black doll analogy. While Emily Raboteau explains more in depth what her feelings were about being born into a blended family and growing up being “different” than everyone else. In Eula Biss’ essay I found this quote relating to mixed families very interesting, “That doesn't mean white adults can't be good parents for black children, but the endeavor is fraught by history..” I thought this was interesting because it gives the perspective of the parents, and not just the children who are born into interracial families. Like the story she uses in her essay, I believe that the kid she carried in her womb was her son regardless of the difference in skin color, and she had every right as a mother to keep contact with him. She also talked about how unconsciously as a kid she reduced her doll because she was black, “My doll's proper name was Susannah, but her common name, the name I used more often, and the name my entire family used, was Black Doll.” As if the color of her skin mattered or made her any different than the rest of the dolls. This example can also relate to Emily Raboteau’s essay, because she explains how she didn’t really know what she was, she just knew she was different. Different because she came from a mixed racial background, and her looks were deceiving as to what ethnicity or group she belonged to. Although both authors use different styles of writing, the point gets across, through details, examples, and conversation that creates a vivid idea of the emotions or thoughts that they underwent at the time.
ReplyDeleteEXTRA CREDIT
As for Das Racist, the lyrics were very complicated to understand, you really have to analyze each word and think of what they’re trying to get across. Racial identity is a very touchy subject and sometimes hard to talk about, but by raping about it, I felt like it was a more light hearted way to approach the subject. As opposed to Emily Raboteau’s essay where she gives a story of how she felt degraded at an airport after being racially profiled.
-Grizzly
Both have differences through their experiences. Eula Biss had less of a challenge compared to what Emily Rabateo on gone through. Emily was lost do to the fact of her un-known look. One quote she had was "This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question." From my point of view, this quote is really involved with nationality because of what was being considered when asked. And even though she would answer with true facts, many would just make fun of her thinking she was lying. Another quote which also caught my eye was "This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat." So here, she tries to explain that due to the fact that she is a mix of white and black, it created a new different identity from both race. She has been profiled but she isn't in either of those categories as appearance seems from another country. One time when she was getting inspected, she felt she had lost her own dignity and free will and disliked to even feel being the smallest in white.
ReplyDeleteCompared to Eula, I was convinced that she tends to take much longer to point given. From both stories, I felt much more connected to Emily's story since I feel I also have some sort of connection to the way she felt but not as much as her.
Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau have somewhat different views on blended families and ideology to it if you will. Eula Biss brings her message through analogies rather than self-experience which she did have some but secondhand if you will. When Eula states, “My doll's proper name was Susannah, but her common name, the name I used more often, and the name my entire family used, was Black Doll.” The doll had been the one with the culture identity crisis no matter if she was in a blended family she will not be white by the restrictions of her skin. When Biss states, “Notorious 1972 statement on the presentation of black families, in which they suggested that the likely outcome of such adoptions was ‘cultural genocide’.” She brings forth facts rather than personal experience; however you can notice how she feels on the matter. When she quotes cultural genocide she takes it as a joke, she feels that it’s alright for people to be in blended families. But, when you read the other quote I picked from her as stated, “…..he might have been robbed of a certain amount of cultural identity to which his skin would be assigned later in life… between two racial identities” she feels sorry for him knowing that others will put him through that struggle and is unsure now if it’s alright to have blended families.
ReplyDeleteEmily Raboteau talks of what she went through being in a blended family, how being a mixed race can make you feel lost or as she puts it without having there “rootlessness”. My first quote from Emily is as stated; I have never felt more black in my life than I did when I was mistaken for an Arab.” She feels lost being in different ethnicities and knows that others put her in random ones, which makes her angry at the fact that she is half black not Arabian. In another quote she brings the fact on someone might feel lost in that position of being in a mixed family as stated, “It means Fuck you,” I wanted to say, not because they’d stripped me of my dignity, but because they’d shoved my face into my own rootlessness”. She realizes that she herself is unsure of who she is has no clue of her cultural identity, almost to me as if saying that she believes blending isn’t wrong but there is much pain in her life for being different. She brings forth as towards what that might mean to her, on how the world sees her standoffish and does not belong to any race and almost as a threat as she states, “this is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question…. A mongrel and a threat.” Here is where I completely feel that she just wished she had not been born into a blended family when some many naïve people are around her.
Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau have extremely similar writing styles when attempting to convey a personal experience with racial profiling. Due to the similarity it was hard for me to decipher the difference between their styles.In each of these essays the writers search for social identity. However, I did manage to find the difference between the two.
ReplyDeleteEula Biss did not have as embarrassing an experience with racial profiling, but she does know what it is. Growing up in a blended home is difficult as a child because you are not sure of which people you identify with. Biss gives an example of racial identity when she states “Race is a social fiction. But it is also, for now at least, a social fact. We are not all, culturally speaking, the same.” At a young age she realized the difference between white and black and saw it as more than a skin tone. Another example Biss utilizes to explain her experiences with interracial issues is when she states "A friend of mine used to tell a story about a segregated restaurant in the South where a sign on one side of the room advertised "Home Cooking" and a sign on the other advertised "Soul Food" and the customers on both sides were eating the same biscuits and gravy." This account of a real live story given to her by a friend depicts how much of different race she experienced throughout her life. She doesn't sound to happy when she has to explain the situation concerning race and adoption stating "The National Association of Black Social Workers, in particular, has continued to oppose the adoption of black children by white parents ever since the release of their somewhat notorious 1972 statement on the preservation of black families, in which they suggested that the likely outcome of such adoptions was "cultural genocide." However, she has a more light hearted tone than Emily Raboteau.
Raboteau seems to give her personal accounts of racial profiling while trying to evoke emotion. It is possible that her serious tone is meant to depict just how serious the issue is. She tells her story when she says “This is what my mixed race has made me: a perpetual unanswered question. This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat.” Growing up in an interracial home was always amazing for her. It seemed like something to be proud of. She gives an example of her pride when she states “Being different was, for both of us, a source of pride and, I’m ashamed to say, enabled us to hold everyone else in slight disdain (especially if they happened to play field hockey or football). Tamar and I were a unified front against conformity.” Both writers have issues with identity due to their dual racial identities. Raboteau's issue with identity is clear when she states “I didn’t fit in. I looked different from the white kids, though I didn’t exactly look black.”
They utilize similar and contrasting writing styles in order to depict their message of racial identity and profiling. It is awesome to see two different styles of writing equal in effectiveness of portraying a message.
-Special K
Eula Biss
ReplyDeleteHer friends were black women and Puerto Rican women and her imagination was full of African folklore.
When he left, just after I closed the door behind him, my cousin shot me a look. "What?" I said. "You were passing," she said, meaning that I had not been acting like myself. And she was right, although at the time I resented her accuracy.
Knowing how to act white is a survival skill for the black family. The white family, on the other hand, struggles with acting black, frequently committing tone-deaf errors, and ultimately not quite pulling it off.
Emily Raboteau
Being different was, for both of us, a source of pride and, I’m ashamed to say, enabled us to hold everyone else in slight disdain (especially if they happened to play field hockey or football).
I hadn’t heard from her in months when she phoned at the start of the Second Intifada to ask me to visit. The desperation in her voice surprised me—it nearly had the quality of begging. I decided to go.
But when Tamar led me through that ancient city of soft hills and olive trees, its white stone going rosy in the sunset, when we entered the mouth of Lion’s Gate and walked along the Via Dolorosa, when I smelled the peach tobacco smoke from a narghile pipe, when I saw the red wool of the Bedouin rugs on display in the Old City, when I heard the calls to prayer from a hundred mosques at dusk, my heart swelled round as the Dome of the Rock with a sense of holy longing, and I halfway understood why men would fight rock over stick, hand over fist, bomb over gun, in order to call this place their home.
An account of life through the scope of logic, Eula Biss seems to attach rationality to her description of race. She recounts her younger days, and her previous experiences with race just like Raboteau does, but her attachments to the understanding of these past experiences come from a more scientific view. Not necessarily meaning that Biss did not come to some very similar personal conclusions in about the same way that Raboteau did, but Biss does not present those ideas as personally. Her descriptions of how she has dealt with her ethnic identity are correlated to how the problem of rootlessness is associated with others in the same group. Raboteau takes a different approach, as personal as possible, catering to the pathos of the three pronged pike of rhetoric. This, however, did not change the amount of credibility she had in comparison to Biss. The power of personality triumphs the lack of background, and her great ability to describe and recount allow for just as much credibility. The longest of the quotes I have from her essay, the one discussing Jerusalem, is a prime example of this; the language used and the beauty behind her environmental descriptions puts the reader where she was. Not a desolate desert landscape, not a horror filled, terrorist ridden wasteland, but a beautiful place full of its own identity, separate from the one that the media tries to create. I truly enjoyed both essays, as different as they were, and could not for the life of me choose between one or the other as favorites. Both of their rhetorical styles, although different, worked equally well and achieved the same effect. To talk about ideology as pertaining to their growing up in diverse households, Biss seems to take more of a cynical social tone, rallying on the negatives but not allowing the negatives to overtake positives; Raboteau loves the diversity, pulls it into herself and allows it to help her grow, gives the differences she has accrued the ability to overcome the separation between herself and the judgment filled world. The cynic and the lover, the logic and the emotion, the never ending struggle between the mind and the heart.
Both Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau are very emotional writers. Eula is more of a subtle writer that makes you think really hard and ask yourself moral questions. She uses social articles and somewhat personal stories to get her point across to her audience. Biss is just as good a writer but she just writes more subtly, allowing the audience to be slowly drawn into her main points. She gives us bits and pieces of her "puzzle" of an article and finally allows the reader to tie them all together to prove a point. Emily Raboteau is a bit of a different writer. She just gets straight to the point. She writes in black and white with no grey area in between. She writes about her personal life which really gets to her audience, allowing them to appreciate her work even more. She uses words that "wow" the audience and immediately grab their attention. She has the advantage (if you can even call it that, but at least for her writing it is) of personal experience that makes her so upfront with her diction!
ReplyDeleteEula Biss quotes:
1. "When we were young, my sister and I had two baby dolls that were exactly alike in every way except that one was white and one was black."
2. "Race is a social fiction"
3. "Although the two can be confused, our urge to love our own, or those we have come to understand as our own, is, it seems, much more powerful than our urge to segregate ourselves."
Emily Rabeteau Quotes:
1. "This is what my mixed race has made me."
2. "It means 'Fuck You'."
3. "This is what the Atlantic slave trade has made me: a mongrel and a threat."
Eula Biss Relations:
ReplyDelete• the practice of selling members of the same family away from each other, so that sisters were separated from brothers, mothers were separated from fathers, and young children were separated from one or both parents.
• Sisters are only slightly more genetically similar than any other two human beings.
• My doll's proper name was Susannah, but her common name, the name I used more often, and the name my entire family used, was Black Doll.
Emily Raboteau Searching for Zion
• It means Fuck you,”
• I have never felt more black in my life than I did when I was mistaken for an Arab.
• I am black but comely, daughters of Jerusalem
Both writers Eula Biss and Emily Raboteau write with a lot of emotion. They both seem to have that connection of with another female, weather it is her sister or just a really good friend she has knew from a long time. The writers have both related back to their childhoods. The difference is the Emily Raboteau, uses more of her experience. This allows the reader to relate and feel more for her story. She throws these big events that have happen and gives a lot of information, to the point that you can feel where she is coming from. Eula Biss does grab the reader’s attention but seems that she does it in a more long term manner, where you have to think about her point, but it still gives you that urge to want to keep reading. There was just more information in between key points.
EXTRA CREDIT
I believe that the Das Racist use Hip-Hop as a resource to get all of their points out because it be listen too more. Also this is an area where they can use as many metaphors and different ways of saying things, where they can’t get in trouble or be accused of something, because they can use turn it around and say no we were trying to say this not that. They also say that they want to be straight forward but then again they are not. Then again their music and videos are very interesting and there punch lines maybe true but they still you use some ridiculous act and things in their videos
-liltunechi
Emily Raboteau:
ReplyDelete*"It means fuck you," I wanted to say, not because they stripped me of my dignity, but because they've shoved my face into my own rootlessness."
*"When we sand freedom songs about the ancient Israelities, we linked ourselves to you. Our people have a lot in common."
*As a consequence of growing up half black in a nation divided along unhealthy racial lines, I had never felt at home in the US.
Eula Biss:
*If both babies had been born white, i might have felt that the white women was entitled to keep them both, no matter what color they were.
*When we were young, my sister and I had two baby dolls that were exactly alike in every way except one was white and one was black.
* It isn't easy to accept a slaveholder and an Indian-killer as a grandfather, and it isn't easy to accept a legacy of whiteness as an identity.
-I feel that both women do an excellent job of addressing the issues of blending and describing their experiences of coming from a blended family. I feel as if I connected with what emily had to say more so than with what was in Eula Biss essay. Emily's, Searching for Zion, connects better with me because in the essay she goes through all the hardships of being mixed in our country. She rawly exposes to us all her insecure moments and her thought about not knowing where she belonged. To me, Emily is a more credible source on this particular instance. Eula speaks about finding it hard to find her place and she acknowledges the differences between cultures but she doe not provide me with much more than that. I do find it interesting that both women seem to be burdened. Emily with being mixed race and Eula for being the race that she is.
-Salami