I’ve been thinking about race/ethnicity recently

I used a word in a story (which I’ll post when Harmonies is finished) and discovered (by way of my beta) that the word I thought meant Spanish speaking indigenous (to the Americas) man is used as a slur in other places in the world (but not the corresponding word for woman, I guess). Quite the shock because it’s been used with pride every time I’ve heard it. The club at my daughter’s college has put up poster about how Latino and Hispanic are just words to signify what language one speaks, not who one is. Those are words imposed by others; this word is what they call themselves. But I don’t want my male lead using a racial slur, even if he doesn’t mean it that way. I’ve already got the older gentleman speaking Spanish and he’s called ‘grandfather’ (in Spanish) by Lavender, so I leave it at that.
 

I enjoy history through clothing, so my son sent me a link to a site about hennins (the tall pointy “princess” hats) and last week I read the Tumblr (my first attempt to navigate any of them) that went with it. It has lots of great picture from European history with people of color in them. Many of these painting I’d seen before as I studied clothing, but either I hadn’t noticed the dark skinned people or I’d dismissed them as tanned white people or just dismissed them.

But this time I looked through them and had to ask myself, why did I automatically assume that a group of people with various colors of skin was all white? Why does it matter to me that famous people from the past were white? What difference does it make if a historical figure is black or gay or deaf or trans or a woman posing as a man for societal reasons? How would it really change history?

Somehow all that’s right in the world has come by way for white men. Imagine my shock a while back when I looked up Alexandre Dumas author of the Three Musketeers, etc. and found that not only was he black, but that his race played a role in what he wrote. 

So if Beethoven or two queens of England or Virgil or Alexandre Pushkin or anyone had African ancestry, we should celebrate it. I am not so insecure that I have to steal anyone else’s glory.