Yokwe and stuff

November 8, 2005 – 9:59 PM – Some more academic babble

Personal stuff first. There really isn’t much. The diving never materialized because two of the divers canceled so we didn’t have enough people to make the trip. For better or for worse, that is the only development in my life over the past two weeks. It’s not even a significant development. It’s just the only development, period.

Now that I think about it, there are two stuffy dorky topics I’d like to discuss. I think I’ll start with the racial one, because, as interested in race as I might have been before, I have become even more interested in it after spending some time here. Some of you, at least those of you who have heard me ramble at length, might be familiar with the idea that certain races have been socially constructed to be more attractive than others. And yes, those of you rolling your eyes now are correct, the race typically agreed upon to have become socially constructed as the most attractive is whites. In short, white is beautiful. Is this actually true? In my opinion, yes. But since I’ve been here, a hearty and definite yes.

In the U.S., there are subtle indications that this phenomenon exists, such as young black girls buying white Barbies more often than black Barbies, or the curious tendency for individuals of other races who are considered physically attractive to embody so-called white features -- fairer skin in the case of blacks, large eyes in the case of Asians. Of course, in America there are millions of people who oppose this development on a daily basis (“Black is Beautiful”) and the result is that few people feel comfortable talking about their preferences in terms of race or at the very most write them off as matters of personal taste (I just don’t find attractive, that’s all). This hypersensitivity has rendered discussion of this topic rather difficult.

Of course, I don’t live in the United States any more. There are no political or ethnic interest groups in the Marshall Islands which have conditioned the people to respond to questions with specific neutral answers. The result was pretty astounding.

Example 1: One of my students wrote in his journal, “There are three types of girls, smart ones, girls who can do stuff, pretty girls . . . Smart ones are smart and cool, girls who can do stuff are smart and can make money, pretty girls are white. If I marry a smart one, she will be cool, but she might not have the pretty white skin.”

Example 2: I asked my students to write one sentence about each person in the class. One girl who, due to a noticeable amount of Japanese descent, is slightly fairer than the rest, received these comments: “You have such pretty white skin . . . Your white skin is so pretty . . . I wish my skin is as white as yours . . . Your skin is so smooth and white.”

Example 3: I asked my students to write paragraphs about the first time they met a non-Marshallese person. Roughly ten or so described the person they met as “beautiful” (usually referring to a woman), maybe 8 “sexy”s (men or women), and a smattering of “pretty”s, “handsome”s, and “good looking”s. One even said, “I cannot explain how beautiful she was.”

The effects of imperialism and globalization, do they ever end?

November 16, 2005 – 11:11 PM – Hah!

I lied, no more babble. Instead, I’d like to share some rather humorous writing assignments I received. From the same “Describe the first time you met a non-Marshallese person” prompt introduced above, about 5-6 of my students wrote about something similar to the following.

“The first non-Marshallese person I met was a man who came to my house. He spoke Marshallese. He said hello. I said hello. He asked if I wanted to be Mormon.”

That’s it. Hopefully some people from Idaho will enjoy this one.