The Faultline of Consciousness by David Maines

Author:David Maines [Maines, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Interpersonal Relations, Social Science, Minority Studies, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9780202306469
Google: M3TtnQEACAAJ
Publisher: A. de Gruyter
Published: 2001-01-15T03:28:14+00:00

Q: In Somalia did you ever think about issues related to race, ethnicity, or color?

R: No, it never occurred to me, I never even heard about the problems between blacks and whites. Even when I was in India, I never heard about issues of black and white, or that blacks are the minority people.

Q: What do you think is the reason?

R: Because we didn’t have anybody that was white. All of us were 100% of the same religion and color. We never had anybody who was superior or inferior in terms of color. But, if I think about ethnicity in terms of tribes, we had that problem, but not color.

Some of the respondents, roughly 27 percent, showed some awareness of the existence of racialized based identity categories, but (to be discussed later) it is not something that they have experienced in their everyday lives that had an impact on their own identity. As the following respondent explains:

R: For me the white person used to be English, German, or American. In Somalia, the Indian was an Indian, the Arab was an Arab. And for us we had this big identity which is Somali. That is it. But race as such, black and white, never occurred to me.

Generally, therefore, the idea of race as a category of understanding social reality or as an identity marker that can enter into the everyday activities of the Somali is something not available in their cultural narrative resources (Holstein and Gubrium 1995).

Table 7.2 Preferred Identity in Canadaa

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