benlehman | (no subject)

I get unaccountably annoyed when people use the phrase "..., who just happens to be [race], ..."

I realize that this is just a dialectical feature of coastal white American English, which is meant to convey "race isn't important to me, but I feel a need to note it anyway." It's a set phrase, and I shouldn't try to parse it for grammatical meaning, like another sentence. But I do, and thus it annoys me.

Does anyone "just happen" to be their race? Did it "just happen" to them? Like they were walking around, happily white just like everyone else, and they tripped and fell in a puddle of Chinese?

Seriously? That happens?

Because most of the people I know get their race from their biological parents, anything but accidentally.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hmm, I'm running that phrase in my head, and the only way it doesn't sound totally stupid is when it's sarcastic, i.e., "John K. was going off on one of his rants in front of Francis, who just happens to be Asian, so you can imagine the look on her face."

I hear it a lot with people talking about gay and lesbian people too, and I think it might be a way for people to talk about their token black/Asian/gay friend slightly more indirectly, but the meaning is often unchanged.

I think you can also use it about yourself: I've said, occasionally, that I just happen to be a chick, and blah blah blah. By which I mean that yeah, I have girl plumbing and all that, but I don't consider it a vast important part of who I am and I'm not going to go off on The Womonly Expherience or whatever. Being female informs my perspective on this issue, whatever it is, but I'm not part of the Ovarian Sisterhood.