I’ve been extremely lazy lately. This will end today, however, because I want it to, and I should be able to control my own will at the very least.
Reflections of a Jazz Theologian is an intresting blog. Especially interesting is the series about “life on the hyphen”. He describes himself as being “On the hyphen between African and American.” and uses the hyphen as a symbolic representation of the tension inherent in duality. But he also says that that duality in and of itself is not important, except as a guide to what he calls the “Tertium Quid”, the third way or “the way of improvisation.”
I find the idea of race interesting mainly because I don’t have one. I mainly refer to myself as Irish-Mexican ( note the hyphen ), because it’s an easy answer and mostly true. In fact there’s more to the story than that. My Grandmother’s maiden name is McHale and she definitely looks it, but my Grandfather’s surname is Nelson, and I beleive he’s mainly English and Polish ( my Mother just looks Irish, which is where I find my justification in calling myself Irish ). And on my Dad’s side I’m “Mexican”, but it’s obvious to anyone that there’s vey little native Mexican blood in there. My Father is white as day and burns easily in the sun, and mi Abuelo had blond hair and green eyes ( or blue, I don’t remember ). So should I say I’m Irish-Spanish instead? Or would Irish-Spanish-English-Polish-Mexican be better? I could just say I’m a mutt. That would be easiest, and more appropriate if you consider it. The concept of breeds that we use for dogs is more accurate here. Every breed of dog belongs to the exact same species, just like every enthnicity of humanity. Any given border collie and any given chihuahua will be genetically identical.
One should keep in mind that the word “race” is extremely misleading. The truth is it doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s been used in so many ways that to use it in any way would be at least partially innacurate. I suppose it used to refer to ethnicity, back when societies were still unique racially as well as culturally and linguistically; but if this is the case, then why not just say ethnicity. Today we use race to indicate larger multi-ethnic groups: black, white, asian, hispanic ( or latino/a or chicano/a ), I could go on. In this sense it becomes quite literally meaningless. We refer to people of African descent ( or anyone who looks it ) as “black”, but ethnicity in Africa is not homogeneous ( I hope I spelled that right ), and there’s no more genetic similarity between two Africans than between an African and a European. And let’s not even begin with “hispanic”, likely the most vague and ill-defined concept on the face of this planet.
Where was I going with this?
Ah yes, the third way, I like that, as opposed to all that above, it makes sense. Consider the language of the ents in Tolkien. The ents are long lived, and spend most of their time quietly considering things. Their language reflects that by having extraordinarily long words. They don’t give proper names to things. By “proper names” I mean what we would think of as a noun. Like the word “hill”, in English we call it a hill. That’s an abstraction. Everyone agrees that things like that will be called “hills”, and when someone says “hill”, other English speakers will get an image of a hill. But in Entish they don’t give abstract names, to put it simpy they put together a series of descriptions of the thing. Impractical, but certainly much more accurate, it would get across the idea of “hillness” better than an abstraction.
In English I say I’m Irish-Mexican, and hopefully the hearer will know enough about Irishness and Mexicaness to understand what that means. I don’t consider myself Irish-Mexiacan, though, I consider myself to be merely myself. I have many given names, but they will always fail me. The true name of anything is merely itself.
