What is a "white man"?

This morning Weekend Edition Sunday featured an interesting story on the Shoshone Youth Language Apprenticeship Program being held at the University of Utah campus this summer. Toward the end of piece one learner, a young Shoshone woman, described why she decided to forget about business school and instead study linguistics.

Someone will step in. You can even bring in a white man to [run a business]. But there isn't going to be a white man who can speak your language.

This observation suggests to me two questions: What is a "white man"? And why can't one speak the Shoshone language? This posting features my reflections on the first of these questions. I'll treat the second one in a future post.

What is a white man? To most people living in US society, this seems like such a simple question that it is not even worth asking. A white person is a person who is a member of the majority white race or ethnic group. But what counts as a race or ethnic group, and who gets to decide which individuals are in one? In order to reflect on the question of who is a white man, let's think for a moment about two related questions that have come up in public discourse recently: Is Barack Obama a Black man? And, on the assumption that Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina woman, does that affect her qualifications for the Supreme Court of the United States?

Before he ever announced his intention to run for the presidency, Barack Obama had been the subject of debates over race (examples here or here). Especially during the primary campaign in Illinois in which he ran against Bobby Rush to be the Democratic Party's candidate for the US House of Representatives, numerous commentators argued over whether Obama is sufficiently Black to represent Black constituents. Various arguments centered on whether different qualities or experiences are sufficient to claiming a Black identity. These included having dark skin, having ancestors from Africa, speaking in styles associated with African American communities, or facing discrimination within US society. Some commentators suggested that even if Obama meets these criteria, he does not share a Black identity since his family was not part of the slavery experience in America.

These arguments resonate with the notions of authentication and denaturalization discussed by Bucholtz and Hall (2004) as part of the tactics of intersubjectivity. The tactics of intersubjectivity explore ways in which identity is constructed within a society. Authentication lets individuals claim an identity in part by emphasizing the "naturalness" of qualities that they share with some group. By a similar token, denaturalization denies the authenticity of such identities by suggesting that qualities are either artificial or non-essential. Identity is achieved in part through such debates.

In contrast to arguments about then-candidate Obama, no one is denying that Sonia Sotomayor has a Latina identity. What is striking in this case is the lack of argument – indeed, the lack of any notice of the identity that eight of the nine current Supreme Court justices (PDF) and all 19 members of the Senate Judiciary Committee share. This identity doesn't even have a commonly used name, though in bureaucratic contexts it is sometimes called "non-Hispanic White."

I have been somewhat bemused, but at the same time unquestionably irritated by questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others that either suggest or presuppose that Judge Sotomayor's decision making may be affected by her Latina identity. These questions are especially called to mind by the judge's now infamous suggestion, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Of course Judge Sotomayor's ways of thinking are affected by her life experiences. What is irritating, though, is the assumption that such effects in the context of a Latina identity comprise bias, but that no such effects exist, or at least they are not problematic, for non-Hispanic white men.

This assumption relates to the notion of markedness, originally described by Prague Circle linguists. It is also discussed by many anthropologists under the heading of transparency. To simplify a bit, the idea of markedness is that some notions are 'ordinary,' and that more particular, specific related notions get marked with more words or with other speech elements. So, for example, a male nurse is a particular, out-of-the-ordinary sort of nurse.

The assumption is that a Latina justice might have prejudices. But in contemporary US society, "non-Hispanic white male" is not a marked position. A "non-Hispanic white male justice" is, in common parlance, called a "justice." No marker, no special identity, no assumption of bias. This identity is "transparent" in the sense that it is looked right through and not seen. If one thinks logically about it, the life experiences of, say Stephen Breyer, must affect his thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors in the same way that any other human being's would. But as an unmarked "justice" those effects on him are not thought of as bias.

So, to return to my original question, what is a white man?

For most of my life, I have been a white man. I have light skin, people rarely ask me about my family history, and I don't usually face discrimination in US society. I generally thought of myself as "just white" until a few years ago, when I saw photographs of my great grandparents and my great-great grandmother. Now, I had always known that I had some Mohawk ancestry, but I had never really felt much about it. I had likewise been told that I had ancestors from Germany, England, Scotland, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, but I had never felt any particular affinity to any European nationality as a result. Yet somehow, despite a career of thinking about race, ethnicity, and identity as positionings achieved via discourse, when I saw the serious faces, the dark skin, and the long black hair of my grandparents staring out from those photographs, I felt some connection to an Indian identity. Mostly, though, what I felt was a sense of disconnection from my own grandparents. I am not an Indian. I grew up around white people, who I more or less identified with, and Lakota people, who I did not. My life experiences, the things I have done and thought, and the ways that other people have treated me have made me a white man. I know that this is not an essential fact about my being; it was not predestined to be so. Still, my own actions, the actions of people around me, and the social structure within which I live establish it: I am a white man.

Defining "Human Rights" in Japan

The Japan Times (15 July 2008) features a piece by Doshisha Law School professor Colin P.A. Jones discussing a 4 June ruling by the Japanese Supreme Court (最高裁判所) on that country's Nationality Laws. In that case, the court expanded the rights of the children of Japanese fathers and non-Japanese mothers to claim Japanese citizenship. (I am unable to find a description of the case on the court's web pages, so what follows is based only on Professor Jones' piece in the Japan Times.)

Beyond the immediate substance of the court case, Professor Jones dissects a notion of 人権 jinken "human rights" that he says is apparent in the majority opinion, the dissenting opinions, and concurring opinions. According to Professor Jones' reading, "[One] of the things that all of the justices seemed to agree on was this: Japanese citizenship has great significance from the standpoint of receiving protection of fundamental human rights in Japan." This seems to suggest that human rights (人権) are granted to Japanese citizens, and not - as the name would seem to suggest - to all human beings (人).

Jones contrasts the Japanese view of human rights, in which the state mediates citizens' claims against one another, with the Anglo-American view, in which human rights are seen as limiting the power of the state over individuals.

The piece is an interesting exploration of how history and culture can affect the relationship among apparently similar ideas. Although many dictionaries translate jinken as "human rights", the two notions are far from identical within their respective legal and historical settings. This might also make a useful point from which to explore the "universality" of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which celebrates its sixtieth anniversary this year.

[UPDATE 11/5/2008
The Japan Times notes today that the government proposed yesterday to revise Japan's Nationality Law in order to meet the Supreme Court's June 4 ruling. I note that the current Japan Times article says, "The top court declared [the previous Nationality Law] a violation of equal rights." That is, a violation equal rights, not of human rights.

On the other hand, an English translation of the Supreme Court's decision is now available. The translated decision states in part, "Japanese nationality is the qualification for being a member of the State of Japan, and it is also an important legal status that means a lot to people in order to enjoy the guarantee of fundamental human rights, obtain public positions or receive public benefits in Japan" (emphasis added).]

JUSTiCES 4 FREE SPEECH

Can someone explain this to me?

Yesterday (25 June 2007), US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, in the case of Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life, wrote:

Where the First Amendment is implicated, the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor.

And yet, on the same day Chief Justice Roberts delivered the court's opinion in Morse v. Frederick. That opinion held that Joseph Frederick, the Alaska high school student who was suspended for holding up a banner reading "BONG HiTS 4 JESUS", had no First Amendment right to display that banner.

The Morse v. Frederick decision balances a number of precedents. Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier (1988) held, "First Amendment rights of students in the public schools are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings, and must be applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment."

On the other hand, a number of cases dating back to Tinker v. Des Moines (1969) have held that individuals do not "shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate."

So, why is this tie decided in favor of the censor, and not the speaker? Is it the schoolhouse gate? or the bong hits?

[UPDATE: Norman Ornstein, guest blogger at The Economist's Democracy in America, comes to much the the same conclusion I did, albeit more eloquently.]