(no subject)

[strange_aeons]

I have a cold. Again. I've had something like half a million colds in the last year, where previously I've gotten them at a rate of about two per year. (This is probably a stress thing. That, and having a desk inches away from a woman I have dubbed Patient Zero.) I hoped I was done a couple of months ago when I caught the same plague that was laying waste to everyone on reality television at the time, and spent a week essentially dead. No such luck. God, my head.

Time to talk about race!

Posit a geopolitical entity of some sort with three primary ethnic populations. Population A is actually a bunch of weird alien monsters that constitute probably less than five percent of the population but hold most of the political power, effectively giving them majority status; they only make up half the government but they appoint all the positions they don't themselves hold. Populations B and C are humans. Let's say for the sake of argument that population B is predominantly very dark-skinned and curly-haired and population C is predominantly very light-skinned and straight-haired. I may decide it's the other way around. Populations B and C speak different languages at home (officially they speak whatever language population A mandates all the roadsigns be written in, either a creole or the language of some earlier population they exterminated or subjugated), practice different secret heretical versions of the state religion, and wear different styles of casual clothing. There is a long history of hostility between populations B and C, probably including wars when they still had their own countries (population A again), but not subjugation. Their numbers and political influence in geopolitical entity X are roughly equal. There are ghettoes, but the people who live in them mostly belong to populations D through M. Intermarriage is legal (because population A doesn't give a shit) but taboo and children of intermarriage are stigmatized.

My question is, does this ever happen on Earth (for values of population A that are not literally from space)? It seems like the kind of thing that probably goes down in parts of east and south Asia every day, but I don't know what's what in that region, ethnically, so I can't say; I just assume every possible interaction of the letters A through M is happening there all the time. I'm not that concerned about its plausibility, because real humans have never had to contend with anything like population A, but I do like having something to crib off of.

I am currently in a state of profound waffle about names and languages. The protagonist is arbitrarily named Simon Wakefield, but he belongs to population D; he's a refugee (population A again). He lost his family and was adopted by a member of either population B or C, and probably took her surname, which means that unless I change his name (and I am strongly resistant to changing characters' names, even when I literally chose said names at random), one of those populations has ethnically British surnames, and population D has Hebrew and/or Greek versions of Hebrew given names, possibly among other sorts of names. I'm thinking about giving the British names to population C, and giving population B French names, just to keep people on their toes. I have some concerns about coming up with an explanation for this that seems legitimate. I haven't made any decisions yet about whether this is one of those alternate Earths I'm so biased toward; I haven't made very many decisions yet about what even the area immediately outside geopolitical entity X is like. It occurred to me as I was writing this that the simplest route would be to make this planet a lost or condemned Earth colony, which it could very easily be, given the magnitude of the weird dangerous shit to be had there. Even if this is the case I might never touch on it at all in the text. This noodling is for my own use.

Whatever happens, population D definitely cannot have Hebrew or Hebrew-descended names exclusively. Maybe Simon is an adopted name also. A devastated, uninhabitable country formerly populated by a now-decimated people with Hebrew names is a can of worms I do not want to open. I didn't particularly want to deal with any interracial tension at all, and then some fell in my lap; there are places I'm not going to go.

Aside: I just saw that ad for the asthma controller that contains salmeterol and therefore 'may cause asthma-related death' again. There's a joke about the FDA and 'lethal quantities of irony' in there that I can't formulate. I blame the illness.

Comments

[ibnfirnas.livejournal.com]

You might look at the Indonesian example, with its attendant Javanese hegemony. The Javanese aren't as small a numerical minority, but the example might have interesting parallels, especially if you look at how it affects larger Indonesian populations--like the Balinese--versus, say, the numerous ethnic groups around Sulawesi. The Javanese effectively run the government, the bureaucracy, the police force, and have a very heavy influence on how Islam is practiced around the archipelago, despite various local sects and groups.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I think if B and C are firm enough about their religious differences, it can all work out from there. What this reminds me of is British Raj (A), ruling a population of Hindus and Muslims (B and C). I don't think there are any particular physical differences between the two religious groups, but intermarriage is very frowned upon (friendships seem to be fine), and dress and other aspects of appearance are also different. The major catch there is that I believe quite a lot of admin positions were taken up by Muslims, because they had previously ruled over some mixed areas. (I think southern India doesn't have such a Muslim population).

You could also look at South Africa under Apartheid - the whites were the ruling minority, and blacks were treated as one group - but I expect they are quite diverse ethnically, and there is probably some interesting material there.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

I don't think there are any particular physical differences between the two religious groups

I almost brought this up myself, that the fact that B and C look so different may in some ways put a different har har har face on it, as compared to a similar situation arising in south or east Asia where the parties involved will mostly at least belong to the same genre of physical appearance. I'm not completely sure, because I don't know this kind of thing from the inside. However, I suspect it's easier to dehumanize someone who looks substantially different from you even sans clothes, makeups and body modifications (all of which details I have yet to make many decisions about).

Ethnic groups D through M mostly fall between the physical extremes of B and C, which creates an interesting(-to-me) cycle of social stigma: B/C people are stigmatized for looking like D-M people and D-M people are stigmatized for looking like B/C people. There must be occasions on which it is useful for members of one group to be able to pass as members of the other, also. Someone is going to ask Wakefield who his father is at some point, knowing only that he has a single female guardian he doesn't much resemble, and given that I write by making up characters and then systematically destroying their lives until they snap and start generating plot on their own, that person is probably going to get spat on.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

I'm suddenly reminded of a story I think Jared Diamond tells, where he's doing anthropological work in the Papua New Guinea highlands, and one of the highlanders asks JD why he's wasting his time pining for those ugly white women when he's surrounded by dark-skinned, curly-haired gorgeousness.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

single female guardian

This is an odd phrase now that I look at it again, given that Wakefield is an adult and does not live with the woman who took him in (though I think they live in the same building, because they have the same profession and people of their profession live in that building).

Early Roman Britain

[dubiousprospects.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

With the caveat that B and C were more like B through J or so. The pre-existing tribal nations that were adjacent would give you something very much like this, though. (B used to live on that side of the river, C on this side, and everybody from the other tribes isn't all that welcome around here.)

Of course, in that case, everyone wound up speaking Latin in the end and forgetting that they had ever been anything other than Romans.

-- Graydon