What?

This blog is part of a larger project of our anthropology class. While others pay particular attention to public communication, sex and sexuality, and body language, our focus here is the performance of race. We look at the many ways in which people or things become of an ethnic background. This can include how a person references, whether through physical attributes, speech patterns, or surroundings, another ethnicity. It can include the ways in which a person makes their own ethnicity apparent (or render them invisible). Even within one ethnic diaspora, we meticulously capture the events in which they separate themselves through even narrower ethnic classifications. Every entry displays a reenactment of a racialized characteristic in the context of American life -- and a profound sense of the meaning of culture.

Why?

We participate in the mass observation movement because we believe that it has much to contribute to the field of anthropology. We capture the "thick description" described by Geertz without the consequences of our participation. In each moment, we are able to catch power structures, cultural flows, functions, structures, an individual's or community's relationship to its environment, human agency, symbols and symbolic meaning, the difference differences make, and/or how history is played out in one simple incident.

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Facebook

I must admit that I am a victim of the phenomenon of facebook.com. I find it's a much easier way to keep in touch with my friends from and in college, and to know on surface level what kind of person they are or have become. You can see what kind of music they like, what their interests are, relationship status, their favorite quotes, and mini-biography of themselves. Aimlessly browsing around the website, something I notice is that unless you are able to see a person's picture, or recognize what country or ethinic group their name derives from, it is hard to tell what their ethnic origin is. However, it is possible.

There are several ways one can make it known to the world one's race/ethnicity. Other than explicitly saying, "I am [insert ethnicity here]," one of them is by joining groups that celebrate one's ethnic background. For example, there're groups for people who are Asian ("Asian Invasion... You Know You Love it"; "100,000 Filipino Faces"; "Adopted Koreans at AU"; "Kazaks United"), Black ("African American Anime Lovers"; "Black Student Alliance"; "1,000,000 Black Students"), Latina ("Mixed Latina Beauties"; "La Unidad Latina"; "LASO"), etc.

Though not completely indicative of one's ethnic background, other ways to make one's race apparent could be by having an extensive list of musical artists from the same ethnic background, referencing people/ideas/things from the same ethnic background, posting albums from different countries/areas that are of a predominant ethnic group, typing in one's ethnic language/dialect, or joining campaign groups that are specific/relevant to that ethnic community. Again, it is not indicative of one's ethnic background, it gives that person more credibility of being Asian/Black/Latino/etc. This is just something I find that all, ALL, of my own friends who consider themselves a minority have in their own profiles.

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