Race, ethnicity, religion, fanon and headcanon

[wowbright]

In all the fan fic I've read that refers to Blaine's ethnicity, he's always identified as at least partially Filipino. Just a wild guess, but I'm assuming that this is because Darren Criss has Filipino heritage. (What exactly the heritage is, I don't know, because I tend to avoid learning too much about actors I like. Okay, for the purposes of this entry, I just looked it up and the ever-reliable Wikipedia says his mother is Fillipina by nationality and Filipina, Chinese and Spanish by heritage.)

The fanon about Blaine being Filipino or partially Filipino isn't based in canon, because there have been absolutely no clear references to Blaine's ethnicity on the show - at least not that I've noticed. (And yeah, the dialogue moves fast, so I very well could have missed something.)

The closest reference has been when Rachel, in BIOTA, imagined a possible future in which she and Blaine could have "vaguely Eurasian-looking" babies together. But I take this as meaningless, because my grandfather used to tell me I looked Japanese - when there is absolutely no Japanese heritage anywhere in my known genealogy - and I have had more than one Korean ask me if I am half-Korean when they've learned about my personal history. I'm not. I'm something like 80% WASP, 12% Swede, and 8% other (mostly or all European). (At least one of my great-grandparents claimed some Native American heritage, but it's unclear whether this is a true claim or wishful thinking.)

So, this is my lead up to asking: Am I a freak that my headcanon does not have Blaine's mom being a first-generation Filipina-American? I honestly don't know what her race/ethnicity is -- it's probably a bunch of things, and Filipina might be in there -- but she's not first-generation American. Is that somehow an insult to Darren Criss?

Because I look at the other characters, and many of them have ethnicities that don't quite match up with that of their characters. For example, Rachel on the show. Her biological paternity is officially unknown, although it is implied by the writers that Hiram, her white dad, is the biological father (her other dad is black). Both her fathers are Jewish, and Rachel identifies herself as Jewish. I've always assumed that, culturally, she leans toward Ashkenazic because if it was Sephardic, wouldn't she have mentioned that? Her bio mom - Shelby Corcoran - appears to be white, but her religion/ethnicity is unknown (although Corcoran is an Irish surname, so we can take a guess at at least part of her ethnicity).

On the other hand, the actress who plays Rachel has a mother who is Italian-American/Roman Catholic and a father who is Sephardic-Spanish/Jewish. So it doesn't quite match.

A run down of other character/actor racial/ethnic/religious differences:

• Puckerman is Jewish, but Mark Sailing, the actor who plays him, was raised as a Christian.
• Tina Cohen-Chang is identified on the show as "Asian," although her name implies it's more complex than that. "Chang" could be Chinese or Korean; "Cohen" is usually Jewish (it comes from Hebrew for "priest") - although I've also read it can be Gaelic. Jenna Ushkowitz, the actress who plays her, was born in Korea and adopted by American parents. Presumably, her bio parents are Korean, but hell if I know.
• Chris Colfer describes himself as Irish-American, while the name Hummel is so freaking NOT Irish I don't even know where to begin. We don't know anything about Kurt's geneaology, though.
• According to some press release I read ages ago, Matthew Morrison is of Scottish heritage. "Schuester" is definitely not a Scottish name.

Back to Blaine. For a while I thought the "Anderson" had to be Scandinavian, which threw me, because Blaine acts like such a WASP. Then I finally looked up the name "Anderson" and found out that it's actually a common surname in England. So "Anderson" is a super-WASPy name, it turns out.

Of course, I shouldn't have been investing so much in the national origins of Blaine's last name, in any case. This is America, and surnames that survive usually have to do with paternal lineage, and not overall heritage. They might reflect the nationality of some ancestor down the line; or they might just be borrowed from people who owned your ancestors as slaves, or from the place from where your ancestors escaped slavery; or they might have been made up on the moment at Ellis Island.

I have no conclusion to these thoughts. I just needed to get them out there.

Comments

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Diana Agron is a Jewish actress... playing a non-Jewish character. (Her mother converted, but her father's family is from Russia so... Ashekenazi, if you're going for ethnic religious background there.)

And Idina Menzel is Jewish, (Ashkenazi) as well. And you're right, we don't know what Shelby's ethnic or religious status is on the show, but "Corcoran" isn't really a Jewish name. (But then my married name is a Jewish-sounding name, and the family I married into isn't Jewish, and my maiden name wasn't particularly anything-sounding, and it was. So that doesn't mean anything necessarily. Thank you, Ellis Island.)

I don't know if Rachel would mention the Sephardi thing, though. It's not really brought up in less observant circles. Even in more observant circles, it's kind of more of a what will you eat on Pesach and how do you pronounce the letter 'tav'? (Reform and Conservative use the Sephardi pronunciation now, since that's what Israel uses. My family is Ashkenazi, with some bizarre Sephardi traditions, but we use Sephardi pronunciation.) And then which synagogue will you go to. I don't think Glee-Lima has an Orthodox synagogue, let alone a Sephardi and an Ashkenazi Orthodox synagogue.

As for Blaine... I think if any part of him is Filipino, it's on his mother's side. As you say, Anderson is from England. I that he could be or he could not be. But the problem that people have with deciding he's not at least half-Filipino is that they're then white-washing him. It could go either way, and until we have canon confirmation, I tend to leave his family history in the air.

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

I don't know if him not being half-Filipino would be white-washing him. As an actor, Darren Criss could pass as (partially or all) black, or Bedouin, or Chinese, or Ainu, or Pakistani, or ... Well, lots of things. I don't see why Blaine couldn't be, either.

Plus, just saying that someone is Filipino doesn't really say anything conclusively about their race. It's like Hispanic. You can be a Euro-white Filipino or a Tagalog Filipino or a Chinese Filipino or etc etc, or an a-lot-of-different-ethnicities/racial categories Filipino. If someone's Hispanic, it doesn't tell you whether they're primarily of African or indigenous or European or Japanese or other heritage. It just says that they're, culturally, part of the Spanish-speaking world, or that their forebears were.

Before I started reading fanon, if someone had really pressed me on Blaine's race, I would have probably said "multiracial" and if they had pressed me further, I probably would have said, "black and white and maybe some other things?" because Blaine looks a lot like someone I used to date who identified herself alternatively as "multiracial" and "black" and "why the fuck does everyone think I'm white just because my mom is?"

Good points about Ashkenazi/Sephardic. I lived in a couple places with large Sephardic communities, so maybe why that's such a big distinction for me.

I wouldn't be surprised if Shelby was Jewish, and I wouldn't be surprised if she wasn't.

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

I agree about Darren Criss (and Blaine by extension) being able to pass as, well, almost anything. (Actually he looks like one of my coworkers, who's Sephardic from Morocco.) I think fanfic writers have taken the easy way out and given Blaine Darren's heritage. I think it would be white-washing if they (nebulous they) decided to give him a pure caucasian heritage, with two white parents from western European descent... I think I, and many others, might side-eye that.

And yeah, I understand that Filipino isn't a race. (It's about as conclusive as Jewish... I'm 5'11'' with straight red hair and glow-in-the-dark white skin and blue eyes, totally screams 'Jewish'.)

I honestly don't know what I would have said. I tend to answer questions like that with "Human". Maybe Jewish, just because, like I said, he looks like my co-worker. (Again, Jewish is in that nebulous not-a-race zone.)

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

I'm 5'11'' with straight red hair and glow-in-the-dark white skin and blue eyes, totally screams 'Jewish'.

That made me laugh out loud, because I must know a disproportionately high number of tall, pale, red-headed, blue-eyed Jewish women. In fact, I can only think of one tall, red-headed, pale, blue-eyed woman I know who's not Jewish.

I don't mind on an individual writer level when Blaine is Filipino; it's the fact that it's become a meme that gets me wondering, "Why, and what does this tell us about our culture?"

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

LOL.

I work at one of the biggest (it used to be the biggest, I don't think it is anymore) synagogues in the southwest, and there are a few redheads -- actually, one of the rabbis is a redhead. But I'm definitely one of the taller women, and I don't know any other tall redheads at my synagogue outside of one guy who kind of freaks me out. I don't usually pay attention to eye color, but I know that when we do exercises with students, blue eyes are more uncommon than not. (And Jewish redheads tend to not have the texture my hair is, which is baby fine. I almost always have my hair pulled back, but when it's down, I get accused of straightening it. It's hilarious.)

Oh, it's a meme at this point. But there are a few of them... Carole's a nurse. (Which, why?) Actually, I think even Rachel's Dads' names are fanon inventions.

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

Rachel's dads names are from a Glaa YA novel that RIB commissioned during the first season. It's supposed to give background to the first season, I think, but I haven't read it.

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Managed to avoid that one. Or even knowing about it. Commissioned fanfic. Great.

[likeasouffle.livejournal.com]

Oh I didn't know that! Good info!

[likeasouffle.livejournal.com]

In my own stories I've avoided references to Blaine's parents' visual descriptions, accents, even first names. If I really had to give them ethnicities, I'd probably say one of them is white European with curly hair (probably his dad, based on the name) and the other is somewhat darker skinned, maybe Asian or maybe somewhere else, but not necessarily Filipino. But I've avoided doing so because his parents could appear on the show at some point and I don't want to be wrong.

I think using an actor's racial background is useful and justifiable, in that A) their visual appearance definitely matches the ethnicity they actually are, and B) the actual show writers may end up using the actor's ethnicity as inspiration as well. But they might not, so really, either way is good.

[wowbright.livejournal.com]

Oh, I think it's justifiable; it's just strange to me that it's so prevalent. I have my own ideas but will probably keep them intentionally vague, which in one way I hate (because I wouldn't do it if I were making up the characters from scratch).