Appendices

What about gender?

Gender throws a whole new aspect into these conversations; too much to attempt to discuss.

We already considered the effect that economics can play in one’s life and trajectory; with glancing consideration to race.

Now we’ve fully brought race into the conversation, although in a backwards manner; highlighting the obstacles within various identity labels.

Further blurring the lines between Aristotle’s pigeon holes.

Nope, I’ve stepped across enough hot water to enter the conversation of gender; save to say there are about five possible genders, biologically speaking.

So if the mother made space for them, who is anyone else to dismiss their divinity?

What about Asian people?

Is India considered a part of Asia? Russia?

You see how this gets really complicated, really fast.

Though there are a few key aspects that it feels safe to infer, or observe.

The Chinese community was able to build self-sustaining communities within the United States.

This provided their community a type of protection that enables individual growth, paving the path for collective advancement.

And perhaps this is why community was specifically denied to Black Americans, destroyed for Native Americans, while Latinos remain caught between honesty and whiteness, sometimes supporting the community, and other times attacking it.

For further study, it is curious to question, as more immigrants arrive in the US, what is the tipping point for community coherence and consequently their capacity for collective self-determination?

Because that is the point of this conversation, regarding the Chinese community, and their ability to maintain their community, identity and collective inertia for success.

Then looking at how other communities are doing similar; in reference to communities from Africa and the countries of Eastern Europe (to a degree).

Though both of these demographics are also caught between cultures.

Those from Europe are able to rely on whiteness as a social lubricant, though still have cause to hesitate to identify with the label of white; while those from Africa are able to provide whiteness with racial diversity, without bringing the burdensome legacy of US slavery.

Proximity to Blackness provides status, and proximity to whiteness provides resources.

Thus we’re able to paint a picture of diversity, without having the requisite depth to sustain it.

And this is what I want us to avoid, because anything built on such a foundation is intrinsically fragile and unsustainable.