I. I spent the weekend feeling kind of crappy, after erging a half-marathon Saturday and still pushing myself through assorted errands and another 10km Sunday. Fortunately Ted identified it as probably dehydration (to which I am ridiculously prone, though less so here than back in the desert) in time for me to get it under control and enjoy dnner with a friend of ours Sunday night. Note to self: diluted Gatorade (or equivalent) is a remedy for unaccountable fatigue, for you. Remember that next time, preferably before the unsettled stomach kicks in.
II. On whiteness: While erging, I’ve been listening to the audio version of the seminal Western novel (really: the, not a) Owen Wister’s The Virginian. I heard this bit during yesterday’s workout: “My name’s Scipio le Moyne. The eldest of us always gets called Scipio. It’s French. But us folks have been white for a hundred years.” Later, when meeting someone new, he says again, “Scipio le Moyne’s my name. Yes, you’re lookin’ for my brass ear-rings. But there ain’t no ear-rings on me. I’ve been white for a hundred years.”
I was thinking about this today after lunch. Today I ate lunch with four other people; all five of us at the table had dark brown or black hair and skin with yellow undertones (or is “blue undertones” what the color-profiling people say about sallow skin? Whatever: not rosy. Not pink.) in tones ranging from ivory to – well, old ivory. More accurately, in hex, from about FAEDAE to E3D2A9. My ancestry is Eastern European Jewish, with whatever blend of Slavic and long-ago Middle-Eastern ancestry that includes. The other two women are Taiwanese. The two guys are both Dutch, but one is first-generation, born in Iraq and the other has parents who came from Indonesia (probably some Dutch acestry from Dutch settlers who went to Indonesia, too, from his face and name). In Wister’s time, probably none of us would have been “white”. Today, the lightest and second-darkest of us (me and the guy from Iraq) would be considered white, possibly the guy of Dutch / Indonesian ancestry. All three of us, plus certainly one and possibly the other of the two Taiwanese women have had the experience of being minorities based on skin tone. (I know one of the women went to school in the US; don’t know how much international travel the other has done – probably some.) Odds are pretty good that all four of the others have encountered worse and nastier discrimination for that than I ever have.
For that matter, my dad tans darker than any of the people I ate lunch with. (Well, darker than they are today – I’m sure one of the guys could give him competition. (Does anyone else remember the old Doonesbury comics from Zonker’ competitive tanning days?))
I’m just cogitating out loud here; not really trying to make any real point here other than how transitory and subjective even the most “obvious” differences among humans are. I’d hope and assume anyone likely to read this recognizes that prejudice and its effects are real no matter how illusory its basis is. It doesn’t make the problem any easier to solve, either. In cases of human behavior the perception creates the reality. But it sure is weird to think about.