Fun with Ethnicities

In last week’s ASL class, we learned signs for a number of countries and ethnicities.  As I have mentioned before, ASL involves something called “frank talk,” where things are discussed openly and honestly without worrying about ‘political correctness.’  For example, the old signs for Asian countries/ethnicities all involved pulling on the side of the eye, which is now considered offensive.  The signs have been updated, but the old signs will undoubtedly still linger.

The “frank talk” also applies to our class discussions.  One of my classmates asked our teacher Mary (who is White) how to describe her racial heritage.  Mary asked her, “Well, what are you?”  My classmate asked back, “Isn’t it obvious?!”  Mary responded, “I want to hear how you describe yourself.”  She responded, “I’m African-American, of course!”  Mary showed her how to sign AFRICAN (another updated sign) and AMERICAN. 

Then Mary asked Carl, “So what are you?”  Carl answered, “I’m BLACK.  None of this ‘African-American’ crap.  I am a BLACK MAN!”  Mary taught him the sign for PROUD, and he stood up and signed “I AM A PROUD BLACK MAN!”  Another classmate said, “I agree, I’m not ‘African-American,’ I’m just BLACK!  I am a PROUD BLACK WOMAN!”  She then asked Mary, “So if someone is White, do you just sign ‘WHITE’?”  Mary said, “No, that sign is just for the color; for the racial description, like ‘Caucasian,’ you sign THIS…  You just can’t call us CRACKERS!”  She laughed as she made the sign CRACKER (as in the food).  Fortunately, everyone else laughed, too.

Mary next turned to me and asked what I was.  I looked down at the nearly-transparent skin on my arms and said, “Um, I’m gonna go with WHITE.  Very, VERY WHITE!”  Everyone laughed again.   “Actually I’m 1/8 Native American, too; but you can’t tell by looking at me,” I added.

As we were walking out to the parking lot, Mary said to me, “I was afraid I was getting myself into hot water for a minute there, but everyone seemed ok with it!”  I told her that when our Level 1 and 2 teacher Susanne (who is Black) first introduced nationalities/ethnicities last semester, she used one of the white students as an example for the sign and said, “You’re WHITE.  I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, please don’t get mad at me, but you are White!”  She then said the same to me; I laughed, showed her my arms, and said, “It’s pretty obvious, it’s not like I can hide it!”  She said, “There’s nothing we can do about our skin color, so we shouldn’t get upset about it.  We can’t change it, just accept it!” 

Our assignment for this week was to practice a short description of our ethnicity/heritage, and present it in front of the class.  I’m always afraid when I get up to sign that it won’t come out the way I practiced it, but this time it went perfectly.  I said (roughly translated):

“I am mostly German, a little bit Native American; but I look like I am 100% WHITE!”

I got some good laughs out of it.

Another girl in the class, who is “mostly Black,” has the same partial Native American heritage that I do:  the Choctaw tribe.  We joked that we’re probably long-lost cousins.

I love it when interracial groups can be open about race, especially when we can laugh about it.  We live in an area where race is a pretty touchy subject, and there is still a lot of racial tension hanging thick in the air.  Discussions like this give me HOPE!

Choctaw family in native dress, ca. 1908