on race and Scotland

Scotland is a white country. Scotland is a Christian country. Glasgow and Edinburgh are the only two really big cities with any significant minority populations. In St Andrews, there is a decently sized asian population (East and South, big enough to form their own communities), a tiny black population, and, as far as I have seen, no latinos to speak of. There are about 6 Christian denominational societies, a Jewish society (population: New Yorkers), and a Pagan society. There may be an Islamic one, but as far as I can tell that's just a service of "Middle East-Soc".

When I first arrived this made me very uncomfortable and I certainly felt something was missing. Now that I've been here a while, I think I can speculate as to why. It has to do with where I fit in culturally. Obviously, my first niche is "American", though not obnoxiously so--I fit in with the international school kids, with their nondescript mid-Atlantic accents, or (obviously) the laid back Californians much better than with the purebred Ivy Prep Americans or the Midwestern study-abroad kids. But that's a tangent deserving of its own anthropological essay.

No, what worries me is this: as I have said to a few people, "I'm, like, the blackest person here".

Let's unpack that. First, obviously, I'm NOT. What I mean by that phrase is that I was raised in a cultural milieu that included all variety of recent immigrants as well as well-established American-black and -latino cultures. The black people here for the most part are middle class and often from Africa, and the few Mexicans I know (I know two) are white as the driven snow and, again, middle class. I have more an idea of the norms of black and latino culture (from an American point of view in an American context) than they do. Or so I think.

This in itself isn't worrying, and certainly shouldn't be the cause of any discomfort of identity. I think where that comes in is how my St Andrews self interfaces with my LA self, aka "the whitest person ever". Oops. In LA, I am defined by being middle class (in the American sense, shut up snobby Brits and use the term 'upper class' where you mean it) and white, both the norm (of American culture, TV, movies, etc) and the 'other' (in terms of, say, the majority population at school). Because it was Culver City and therefore a pretty white, middle class area, this wasn't weird at all. What is confusing is that, at St Andrews, I end up with all sorts of false associations that are based on place of origin, as well as odd cultural mixes that don't quite fit. False associations mainly revolve around the California hippy/surfer/stoner stereotype--roles I am happy enough to play along in, but which I would have been in contrast to in places where they, you know, actually exist. In terms of (racial) culture, something similar bizzarely happens. I can say "chill" and "dawg" without sounding like I'm speaking a foreign language, and I know people who sound like the bad American rap that upper crust Brits like listening to before a night out. I feel a strange kinship with the (2) Mexicans I know, but at the same time realise that (1) their experience is different from the bland stereotype I'm probably projecting, and (2) they have legitimate outsider status in a different way-being from Mexico and Mexican, rather than being near Mexico and knowing Mexicans. And it's not like loads of my friends are Mexican! But somehow I am along an odd continuum where I have outsider status in LA from black/latino/generally-ethnic culture, but just enough immersion in that culture to miss it here and for my (very slight) emulations of it to give me outsider status here.

What spurred this post was listening to an American-latino spoken word poet (Carlos Andres Gomez), specifically talking about a Latino sense of machismo, and thinking 'man, very few people in St Andrews would probably get this.' Then I thought, 'man, *I* probably don't get this'. But I would get it more than them?

Anyways, it's late and bedtime. I imagine this post is probably offensive in some way, but there it is.