Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Transracial

This page is an archive of the proposed deletion of the article below. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page, if it exists; or after the end of this archived section. The result of the debate was Keep (11 keeps, 4 deletes). Scimitar 28 June 2005 14:45 (UTC)

[edit] Transracial

There is no accepted concept of "transraciality" beyond the concept of passing. Bumm13 17:45, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Delete see above Bumm13 17:49, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - neologism. Gorrister 17:51, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete The actual definition is: "Involving two or more races, as in a transracial adoption." The article is attempting to create a definition instead of reporting a definition.--Alabamaboy 17:52, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC) Changed vote. See below.--Alabamaboy 18:52, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• 'Delete for reasons already listed. I'd support an article on transracial adoption, but this is a mere dicdef, and as Alabamaboy said, is not really a correct one either. --Idont Havaname 20:56, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Delete - see above -- AlexR 23:01, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep Unless, you want to change the article's name, this one is good. Shorthair 02:53, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep I disagree with the whole "accepted concept" issue. To me wikipedia is sort of like urban dictionary. You can have new information before it's common knowledge. I think deleting every new bit of information goes against what wikipedia represents. My keep vote is mostly because the article gives a source for its reference. If it did not have the source I would vote to merge it into Michael Jackson. I wonder how long until someone erases the source from the article now that I mentioned this. Muijzo 03:04, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep This is a fascinating one. Although one of the first three delete votes (that came within one minute of each other) claimed that he found transracial in a dictionary, none exists. Now I have heard the news refer to Michael Jackson as transracial, so I checked several web dictionaries. None have definitions of transracial. I see that the article was once a link to passing, but no proof exists that these words mean the same thing. Without a dictionary reference at all, I think the relation to passing is wrong. I did a google search for transracial and Michael Jackson, See this link for the search. At present there are hundreds of pages all citing him as transracial. Now the person who changed it from a redirect is, according to their user page, a transexual, so I obviously assume they must feel that transracial is like transexual. There was a point raised about renaming this article, but it is moot since transracial is in common usage referring to The King of Pop. Clearly Shorthair did not make this word up out of her (or is it his?) head. Chunitaku 04:08, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep There is a course at UC Berkely that backs up the usefulness of this article. See http://english.berkeley.edu/courses/fall03r1ar1b.html

It says:

Course: R1A

Section: 12

Topic: the nth race: introduction to transraciality

Instructor: Joon Lee

Time: TTh 11-12:30

Location: 258 Dwinelle

Course Control #: 28436

Course Description:

"The first birth is often a failure."

Anaïs Nin

Thanks to "advances" in medical and psychiatric technology, we are now able to view gender as a transformative aspect of life: we are not stuck in the sexed body with which we were born. However, our racial identity is still something that seems biologically inescapable, in spite of the now very rich and convincing theoretical history of its constructed, non-essential nature. While the history of transsexualism is marked by the potentially political affect of social transgression, the history of transraciality speaks to us from advertisements for skin-blanching creams, history-denying acts of racial passing, and community-betrayal. Why else the negative reaction-from disgust to ridicule-to Michael Jackson’s plastic surgery escapades? This is, however, contrary to the everyday experience which finds that individual and group racial identification is a process which is necessarily transracial: in declaring ourselves racially, we all cross boundaries set by societies contemporary and past. In this course, we will attempt to produce an idea of idea of race based on the best of transsexualism. The "race" produced thus, like the "third" gender produced by transsexuality, will lead to a complication of existent preconceptions about racial stereotypes and formation.

So I believe there is relevance in the concept, but the article does need to be expanded. DyslexicEditor 06:06, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Keep with complete redraft Transracialism exists and is a notable topic, but not as it is used here at all. Axon 11:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep - but it needs a rewrite. jamesgibbon 15:25, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep VfD isn't to delete articles that are simply bad but on a useful topic - cleanup would be a more approperate tag. This topic appears to be real and likely the next step from gender modification surgery from the interesting quote DyslexicEditor gave. --ShaunMacPherson 18:14, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep if expanded along these line. I previously voted to delete but this discussion has changed my mind. However, I still believe the original article was not worth keeping. But the revised version looks promising. --Alabamaboy 18:51, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep I believe it's an interesting article. I saw someone put the word transformation in the article, so I created Transracial transformation and Transracial Transformation, then made them redirect to the main article. And I don't think Michael Jackson will be the last to have this surgery. Oh and a comment, if you think we should change the article name to have the word transformation in it, let's discuss it here, too. JimRaynor 18:58, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Comments. I don't think that "Transracial" is a good article title, because it's awkward for an adjective by itself to be an article title ("Interracial" redirects to Interracial couple for the same reason). Clearly the topic is notable, but the question is now what to call it. "Transracial transformation" gets only 4 Google hits, so if we renamed the article to that, it would just be a neologism; the Google query for "transracialism" did not do much better. One idea I have is to create a new article on Race choice and merge content from this article and passing over there. The transracial article, for the most part, looks like a POV rant about Michael Jackson that's already covered in the Michael Jackson article; certainly he is worth mentioning as a notable case, but it shouldn't just be about him if possible (and his case should merely be mentioned, since his own article discusses it in detail). I'd suggest bringing this topic up at Talk:Race and/or Talk:Michael Jackson to gain additional perspectives on it. --Idont Havaname 05:54, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Comment "race choice" wouldn't be useful. "Transracial modification" ? "racial modification"? We need something that people can find easily. I agree it should not just be about Michael Jackson... I just thought of another reference, albeit from fiction--In the latest James Bond movie, the villain was Korean but through radical surgery (genetic stuff too) he changed himself to appear Brittish with the side effect that he needs an expensive machine to get sleep. DyslexicEditor 06:32, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Keep but needs a rewrite. Marginal notability but interesting. JamesBurns 08:49, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
• Keep, but I thought 'transracialism' meant someone who didn't want to be human period. (Or perhaps that's transpecism.) Almafeta 00:00, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be placed on a related article talk page, if one exists; in an undeletion request, if it does not; or below this section.