At this university upon a hill,
I meet a tenured professor
Who's strangely thrilled
To list all of the oppressors --
Past, present, and future -- who have killed.
Are killing, and will kill the indigenous.
O, he names the standard suspects --
Rich, white, and unjust --
And I, a red man, think he's correct,
But why does he have to be so humorless?
And how can he, a white man, fondly speak
Of the Ghost Dance, the strange and cruel
Ceremony
That, if performed well, would have doomed
All white men to hell, destroyed their colonies,
And brought back every dead Indian to life?
The professor says, "Brown people
From all brown tribes
Will burn skyscrapers and steeples.
They'll speak Spanish and carry guns and knives.
Sherman, can't you see that immigration
Is the new and improved Ghost Dance?"
All I can do is laugh and laugh
And say, "Damn, you've got some imagination.
You should write a screenplay about this shit --
About some fictional city,
Grown fat and pale and pretty,
That's destroyed by a Chicano apocalypse."
The professor doesn't speak. He shakes his head
And assaults me with his pity.
I wonder how he can believe
In a ceremony that requires his death.
I think that he thinks he's the new Jesus.
He's eager to get on that cross
And pay the ultimate cost
Because he's addicted to the indigenous.
Sherman Alexie self-identifies as a Spokane/Coeur d’Alene Indian. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Washington, which he left to attend a nearly all-white high school (where the only other Indian was the school's mascot). His first screenplay,Smoke Signals, was the first major film produced, written, and directed by American Indians. Alexie is the author of dozens of books and the recipient of nearly as many awards (you can read a bio about him here). The above poem is available online here, and in Alexie's recent book, War Dances. (Image source)
Last week, a French dancer named Alizee Sery drew a lot of angry attention to one of her performances. Despite her subsequent claims to the contrary, getting into the international news cycle may have been her intention all along. At any rate, and whatever Sery's own racial makeup, what she did -- by traveling to Australia, climbing atop a site considered sacred by Aboriginal people, having herself filmed while dancing and stripping, and then defending her actions as a way of honoring Aboriginal traditions -- ended up being a common white thing to do.
First, here's a (safe-for-work) news-clip on what Sery did atop Uluru, a rock formation formerly known by the Australian white conquerers' name, Ayers Rock:
In a subsequent interview, Sery defended her actions by claiming, "What I did was a tribute to their culture, in a way. I think the way I was, was the perfect way to be up there, in total harmony with the land and with myself."
More ridiculously, Sery also said her self-aggrandizing publicity stunt was a tribute to the days when, you know, those groovy, close-to-the-earth peoples were even closer to the earth than we are by virtue of their lack of clothing:
I respect the aboriginal and their culture. What I did was a tribute to their culture, in a way. . . . What we need to remember is that traditionally the Aboriginal people were living naked. So stripping down was a return to what it was like.
Sery may have thought she was honoring indigenous traditions (though I doubt that she really cares about honoring much of anything, other than her own body). But seriously, shouldn't the estimation of whether such acts constitute an honorable, respectful "tribute" be left to the supposed honorees?
Various online reports suggest that Sery has no interest in actually listening to the people whose culture and traditions she claims to respect. If and when she does, she'll find out that a lot of them, including those who currently own Uluru, are angry.
As noted in the news-clip above, "traditional owners of Uluru" described Sery's stunt as "an insult, and they want the woman deported." According to the Brisbane Times, Sery
has been labelled "stupid" and local indigenous elders have described the act as the equivalent of defecating on the steps of the Vatican.
Alison Hunt, traditional owner and member of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Board of management said: "I am angry and disgusted at this stunt. This is an important spiritual place. It's not a tribute to the traditional owners, it's an insult.
"We try to share our land and work together and we think it is disgusting for someone to try and make money out of our sacred land."
Disgusting indeed, and again, a blatant attempt to make money and drum up publicity (interesting term, that -- "drum up" . . .). More to the "swpd" point, Sery seems to be furthering her dancing career in a common white way, by casting something authentically Aboriginal as a natural, romantic, wild, and exotic backdrop. This amounts to a racially white performance, because it's meant to evoke and profit from some of the many collective white fantasies about non-white people.
In this sense, Sery's actions, and her defense of them, echo similar ones committed in the U.S. by many white people, who also tend to romanticize and exotify indigenous people. To me, the most obvious parallel way they do so is by clinging to racist sport logos and mascots. White American sports fans cling to mascots that represent several racial groups in racist ways, but the overwhelming majority (past and present) represent Native Americans.
When white people defend such insults in the way that Sery did -- by claiming that they're honoring instead of disrespecting the human objects of their racist caricatures -- they're failing to listen to the other side. By doing so, they're ultimately failing to understand what a lot of people on the other side think, and feel. They're failing to empathize.
So, what to do, when confronted with such common white ways? I think that turning the tables, in the way an indigenous person described above did, can have some impact on such simplifying, appropriating, and insulting white people. I've actually seen it work.
Again, an Aboriginal person was paraphrased as having "described the act as the equivalent of defecating on the steps of the Vatican."* There you go, white people -- how would you feel, if your own sacred traditions were effectively shat upon? Would you really consider that a sincere "tribute"?
I remember hearing (or actually, seeing) another good example of that same kind of table-turning, during a talk by a Native American author, Sherman Alexie. Someone in the audience asked him about a local college's Native American mascot, which was currently under review. Alexie's answer was more of a demonstration, or a pantomime; the white people I attended his talk with later told me that it really got through to them. They even told other white friends about it later.
"Oh yes, I heard about that mascot," Alexie said, rather mischievously (he gets his points across with a lot of humor -- he's often hilarious). "And, I've been thinking about a replacement. Here's what I suggest."
Alexie then stepped to the side of the podium, spread his arms wide with his hands splayed towards us, pulled his toes together, and let his head droop forward. Many in the audience signaled that they got his point by applauding. Alexie offered no further explanation.
I've since confronted people in the U.S. who see no problem with team names and mascots like the "Indians" and the "Redskins" in a similar way.
"So you don't mind that?" I ask. "Really? Okay, well, what about a team named, say, the New Jersey Jesuses?"
This idea usually evokes a laugh. An uncomfortable one, especially if they themselves are Christian.
I'll then say something like, "Doesn't that sound great? The mascot could dance at half-time, like some of those 'Indian' ones do! And he could drag a huge cross around the basketball court, with a wheel on the end of it. And at the climax of his dance, he could spin the cross around and around, and actually dance with the cross!"
By this time, my point (or rather, Alexie's point) is usually made, and usually well taken. By which I mean, the person who'd just defended a racist, common white practice is now less enthusiastic about doing so. I can see it in their faces.
* The person who actually made this comparison is identified in this article as "Aborigine John Scrutton, who lives in the Northern Territory city of Darwin."
A white friend and I recently had an argument about racism in Australia. We were in a restaurant, and it started off with us talking about whether Barack Obama is black or white or both. One thing led to another, and I was soon trying to explain how subtle racism works.
She and her other white friend of course thought racism was only limited to a select few idiots. I tried to suggest that it was widespread and systemic, but I didn’t have the right vocab. She and her white friend were offended, and she started pulling out all the derailment tactics you can think of. (My mouth fell wide open the first time I read Derailing for Dummies.) She started pushing my buttons real bad. When I tried to describe various racist incidents, she bombarded me with questions like: “Maybe it was about gender? Maybe they had a bad day? How do you know it wasn’t you? Maybe they’re just jerks.” Etc , etc, etc.
This went on till things got quite . . . very tense. I was visibly upset (or so I thought). The ultimate point was when she said, ‘I like your skin. Your skin is beautiful. Look at mine, it’s ugly.’
I was furious when she said this. ‘I KNOW MY SKIN IS NICE! I DON’T NEED YOU TO TELL ME!’
I was almost yelling. I nearly stood up to go, but then I realized that I had to drive them home. I don’t remember ever being so angry with a friend.
The next day, I visited her as I usually do on the weekends. I was desperate to talk over what happened the night before. I felt like there was a knot in my heart and in our friendship, and I wanted to unknot it. We began talking about our earlier discussion, and with the help of her poc husband, she soon managed to ‘tame’ me. She then tried to convince me that 'perhaps I was perceiving things wrongly’.
It didn’t matter how many times I asked (at times with tears visibly rolling down my cheeks), ‘So are you saying that I’m imagining racism?’ She would respond, ‘No, I’m just saying that the way you’re perceiving things might be wrong.’
She tried to make it about ‘perception’. To this day I really can’t see the difference between ‘imagining racism’ and ‘perceiving things wrongly’.
Several times we argued about various issues and examples. At one point she tried to suggest that I was racist towards aboriginal Australians because I didn’t have any Aboriginal friends (note: Aboriginal people make up about 2.5% of the population, hint, hint), and the time I refused to watch an aboriginal Australian ritual dance that was being dished out as a performance dance for tourists. I said to her, “I have yet to even cross paths with an Aboriginal person.” (i.e., I have seen some pass me by on the streets on rare occasions, but I have not met any Aboriginal person. Not surprising when they are only 2.5% of the population.)
She responded, “But why don’t you have any Aboriginal friends?”
What, did she not hear me? I reiterated, “I said I have not crossed paths with any.”
She said, “But, why don’t you have an Aboriginal friends?”
Uh, what? I don’t get it. How the hell am I supposed to be friends with people I’ve never met??? Why does she not understand that? I said, “Well, I once passed by a small group of Aboriginal students outside the Aboriginal Studies department at the university having a barbeque, and yeah, I suppose I could have approached them, but. . . ”
Luckily, her husband butted in and said, “But wouldn’t it be weird if you wanted to be their friend simply because they’re Aboriginal?”
“Uh, yeah,” I responded.
As for the dance, the reason I showed a lack of interest in watching it was mainly because I didn’t like the way what seemed like a ritual dance had been turned into a performance catering for tourists. Most members of the audience were white. I looked at the audience and felt as though many were watching this aboriginal performance in order to feel unracist and more tolerant. I hated this exoticization and essentializing of the Other, and how the exoticization and essentializing was being used as a badge to 'prove' their open-mindedness.
The other reason I didn’t enjoy it is because I don’t enjoy any kind of traditional dances, period. I don’t care even if they’re from ‘my own country,’ I still find them boring for the most part. But obviously, instead of asking me why I didn’t want to watch it, my friend just assumed that she knew what was going on inside my head, and that I didn’t want to watch it because I was prejudiced towards Aboriginal Australians. Nice going.
There are more examples, but I’ll spare you the details. Suffice it to say, since reading swpd, I’ve been simply amazed at how this one incident contained so many of what the posts here describe. The most recent is making amateur psychological diagnoses.
So back to that day -- for every issue that we talked about, whenever I’d try to explain things, she would never let me finish. She’d just keep cutting me off. Her husband is more softspoken, so he managed to play the broker and calm things down. At the end of the discussion (and this was what I thought might be helpful here, but I kinda felt like telling all the other parts of the story first, for context), she pulled out a bunch of papers from her bag.
She said, ‘Please don’t be shocked by how extreme the list might seem. Just take it to mean that we all have some of this, to a degree. And can you just go through the list and see how many of those apply to you, and how strongly, you know? But be honest. Just go by your first reaction.’
She handed me the paper. It was a psychological questionnaire that she got from her ‘counselor’. A list of stuff relating to pretty hardcore insecurities. And sure, I’ve experienced some of them to a degree in the past, but for the most part, I’ve dealt with them already. I don’t think she believed me when I said so. More importantly, I could not see how this had anything to do with my experience of racism. I told her so.
She suggested several more times that I should go see a counselor (i.e., psychiatrist). I disagreed. But she had me ‘tamed’ by the time she said this. So I didn’t really argue much. I thanked her and her husband for the discussion, and went home. I thought I was ‘cool’ about it all. As I drove home, I thought I ‘felt better’.
But the minute I entered my home, suddenly the rage just all came out. I was so very, extremely angry that she had tried to ‘tame’ me, by trying to make me see things from a more ‘rational’ point of view. Basically, she was suggesting that I was imagining things, and that if I did experience racism, it was because I had some sort of psychological issue. Her diagnosis was very, deeply hurtful.
I tried to tell her so in an email the following day. She hadn’t shown any willingness to listen when I spoke to her in person.
That said, I think I’ve done the same things myself with other people, though I’ve of course never done so in the context of racism. Recent posts and discussions on swpd reminded me of that incident, and made me realize that I really shouldn’t do it to others either.
Try to be honest -- what are your initial thoughts and feelings when you watch the first minute or so of this video?
Now try this one, of a white girl dancing to African (anyone know the particular country?) music. Try to be honest -- are your thoughts and feelings any different about this one?
No need to mention fears you might've had about the first child falling off the table -- that's too obvious, and maybe even derailing.
h/t to Kit, who has a great post about the first video at Keep It Trill. Good comments there also; the racially marked contrast in the comments at YouTube for these two videos is instructive too.
At Kit's place, where a commenter named soul linked to the second video above, I wrote the following in a comment:
I'm a white American, and that means that I'm trained to see white and black people differently. More to the point, I've been unconsciously trained to trust unfamiliar white people and fear unfamiliar black people. So as I watched this video, I eventually got around to seeing it as the innocent, harmless fun that you see it as.
But, I'm willing to admit that it took awhile for me to see it that way. I think I did see blackness first, and heard "that" music, and saw "that" kind of dancing. And so, at first, certain feelings were triggered -- associations, ones that I've been taught to feel when I encounter poor, urban, and thus supposedly dangerous black people. I'm still more likely to have words like "thug" come to mind with black people in such a situation, words that don't come to mind when I encounter white people basically doing the same damn things.
However, I think I have come to recognize, with a lot of hard, "anti-racist" work on myself, that 1) while those trained, unwarranted, and racist feelings are deeply embedded in me, and they're still going to kick in sometimes, 2) I can push past those feelings, and look more realistically at the human beings in front of me. And so, after a minute or so, I was watching this baby dancing and just having fun, and I was soon thinking, well, cool, that DOES look like simple, innocent fun. (And yes Kit, I think this particular white male did feel some jealousy too -- I wish my suburban middle-class family had been able to relax enough to have what looks like joyous, full-bodied fun -- we never danced together, at all.) (And no, I don't think now that all black people dance better and all that, etc.)
I also really appreciate soul's comparison of the other video, which I've seen before. And yes, none of those feelings about "thugs" or corruption of this young child came to mind when I watch that video, and that has everything to do with that girl's whiteness.
I'm glad that I can now see these two videos as basically the same, wonderful thing, even though I've been trained not to.
I'm guessing that most readers of this blog have already heard about Harry Connick, Jr.'s anti-racist activism on some sad-looking TV show down in the big Down Under. Nevertheless, I decided to highlight the clip and his righteous remarks here because it's a chance to do something I rarely do -- give white people credit when they do the right thing.
Thanks to their conditioning in a society that remains fundamentally racist (that is, white supremacist), white people often still do racist things. Sometimes they do that intentionally, though more often they do it, I would bet, without even realizing it (that is, unintentionally -- unconsciously).
But then, at other times, when white people are confronted with blatant racism -- such as, say, other white people shuckin' and jivin' in a ridiculous blackfaced throwback to the Jim Crow era -- sometimes white people stand right up and call that kind of obnoxious crap exactly what it is.
So kudos to Harry Connick, Jr. for doing that, and may other white people follow his lead when confronted with racism (blatant or subtle), be they in the U.S., Australia, or other national contexts.
And speaking of national contexts, did you know that a common designation in Australia for that land's indigenous counterpart to the U.S.'s "Native Americans" is "blacks"? It's true, or so I've heard, and read.
So, does that make a "blackface" performance like this one that HC, Jr. objected to any different there than it would be in the U.S.? It surely doesn't make it any less wrong, and obnoxious; I'm just wondering if it makes it any different.
I'm also wondering -- would an Australian TV audience laugh less readily if a group of white Australians blacked-up like this for a stereotypical, supposedly humorous imitation of indigenous Australians, instead of black Americans?
White Australian TV-show Host (@ 4:40): I noticed, when you were very kindly judging red faces [?], I noticed that when we had the Jackson Jive on, and it didn’t occur to me until afterwards, that I think we may have offended you. I deeply apologize on behalf o all of us, because I know that to your countrymen that's an insult to have a blackface routine. So I do apologize to you.
Harry Connick Jr: Right, thanks Daryl. I just wanted to say on behalf of my country, I know it was done humorously, but you know, we've spent so much time trying to not make Black people look like buffoons that when we see something like that we take it really to heart. And I know it was in good fun, and the last thing I want to do is take this show to really a down level, because I love this show and this country, but I feel like I'm at home here, and if I knew that was gonna be a part of the show, I definitely wouldn’t have done it. So I thank you for the opportunity. I gotta give it up, cause Daryl said at the break, he said, Man, you need to speak as an American. Not as a White American or a Black American, but as an American I need to say that, so thank you for the opportunity.
[My thanks to the many readers who emailed links to this video]
Here's a screenshot from the current Gap campaign for its "1969 Jeans" (you can click on this image for an interactive, 360-view of each woman).
Notice the racial choreography here -- six apparently white women modeling a variety of styles, from "Sexy Boot" to "Always Skinny," and off to the side, one black woman, who's wearing a style named "Curvy."
Is the Gap's shopping demographic really THIS white? Why not also include another black woman here (or for that matter, another non-white one) wearing, say, the "Perfect Boot" style? Do only white women wear boots with their jeans? And would only black women buy "Curvy" jeans?
Aside from the lopsided racial composition of this model lineup (it's odd how that arrangement brings to mind a police lineup . . .), the bigger problem here is the limiting of black women to one, all-too-familiar role and body-type: "Curvy." This label -- especially for a style of jeans depicted alongside a row of white women wearing other types of jeans -- perpetuates a cultural fixation on one part of a black woman's body, a denigrating conception of that part as something that fundamentally differentiates their bodies from other women's bodies.
The collective white imagination has long arranged beauty in a hierarchy, with supposedly common white characteristics at the top, and supposedly common black ones at the bottom. This Gap advertisement perpetuates this racist hierarchy, by limiting the role of black women to a stereotypical representation of, well, their bottoms -- their supposedly big "booties." Nothing else about their bodies gets nearly as much mainstream cultural attention as this part does.
This common white, denigrating fixation is, of course, nothing new, as it evokes the sad eighteenth-century spectacle of Saartje "Sarah" Baartman, who remains better known by her objectifying label, "the Hottentot Venus."
Baartman, an enslaved Khoikhoi woman, was sent to England by her Dutch "owner" in order to display her nude self as a sideshow attraction. As Wikipedia explains, "Baartman was exhibited around Britain, being forced to entertain people by gyrating her nude buttocks and showing to Europeans what were thought of as highly unusual bodily features."
In her insightful analysis of today's white-framed media fixation on this body part of another black woman, Serena Williams, Renee Martin connects contemporary white interest in this topic to the degrading curiosity of Europeans in Baartman's body:
Since the days in which Saartjie “Sarah” Baartman was forced to reveal her buttocks and labia to curious Europeans in a human circus, the bodies of Black women have been scrutinized and uniformly judged as lacking and/or sub-human. While our bodies may no longer be on display, the fixation with the buttocks of Black women reveals that the “The Hottentot Venus” stereotype is still very much a part of social discourse.
Fox News recently ran a story on Serena in which the author, Jason Whitlock, referred to her as an “underachiever” and called her derriere a “back pack.” It would seem that though she is ranked number two in the tennis world, it is acceptable to claim that her athletic frame is little more than “an unsightly layer of thick, muscled blubber,” because her body does not conform to what is understood as the beauty norm.
Those who more readily conform to the beauty norm are white women. This is not, of course, because they are somehow more intrinsically beautiful; it's because white people have been imposing their own beauty standards on others for centuries. And as this toxic, racially clueless Gap jeans campaign suggests -- with its exaggerated and marginalizing reduction of black women to a stereotypical fixation on one part of their bodies -- white people still do that.
Anyway, it's not like a lot of other women, who are white and otherwise non-black, don't also have, and even appreciate, bigger -- excuse me, "curvy," booties.
[Since it's high school prom season, I thought I'd repost the piece below (which I first posted here), about the ongoing "tradition" of white proms. This is also an update of sorts--The New York Times published a report a few days ago on another example of this tradition of segregation, in Montgomery County, Georgia.
I'm wondering now, how common are these segregated proms, in the Southern U.S., or elsewhere?
In a slideshowthat accompanies the Times story, a white mother explains in a voiceover, "This community and this school system is fine like it is. This is the way that they have done it ever since the school system has been opened and they started having proms. So, it's worked for them thisaway. Why change something that has worked? It's not broken. The kids are fine with it."
Actually, as the Times article points out, many of the kids, both black and white, are not fine with it.
In another voiceover, Kera Nobles, a black student at the school says, "My high school has been a great one, except for one night that I only share with people that's my same race, and that would be prom night. Yes, it is hurtful, because you just think about how, I go to school with you every day, I sit beside you in class, we take the exact same notes, we use the same kind of paper, the same kind of pencil. I mean, I sit beside you at graduation, but I can't go to prom with you one night?"]
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered racial integration of all schools, including all their events. In 1970, the one high school in Charleston, Mississippi finally allowed blacks to attend, but white parents refused to allow black students to attend the school Graduation Dance.* Thus began a tradition of separate, parent-organized White Proms and Black Proms, a tradition that lasted until, incredibly enough, 2008.
This story is told in a movie that I'm looking forward to, Prom Night in Mississippi. Directed by a Canadian, Paul Saltzman, it covers Morgan Freeman's successful effort to end this racist tradition, by offering to pay for an integrated prom. Or rather, his successful effort to almost end it. Although last year's integrated prom at Charleston High School was a success, a group of white parents still held a separate prom for some white students.
And what are white parents' justifications for allowing their children to attend school with black students, but not the prom?
Saltzman, the film's director, provides this answer: "When I was doing the research and asking people 'What was the problem in having the prom together?' what whites usually said is, 'You know, blacks are into drugs; they're into violence' and on and on and on."
Chasidy Buckley, a black student who attended the integrated prom, provided a similar answer: "A lot of the white parents were concerned about safety. They were afraid that fights were going to break out, but the prom went smoothly. It was great; nobody got hurt or anything."
A rich irony is that while the integrated prom went smoothly, a fight broke out at the whites-only prom.
While unfounded fears of violence fueled white parents' fears, it seems clear that there's another, more covert reason that some don't want their children dancing and partying with black kids--their heads are filled with stereotypical images of black hypersexuality.
Many parents fear drinking and fighting at such events, but they also fear heightened possibilities for sexual contact. And, as one white student notes in the clip from Prom Night in Mississippi below, that includes sexy dancing, especially "grinding."
White kids often grind when they're dancing too, but black and white kids grinding together? "Heavens no," many white parents think, "not my daughter!"
I remember talking once to a young white woman from another deep Southern state about her dating experiences in high school. She said she'd only dated white boys, "because like my mother always warned me, everyone knows that black boys are only after that one, single thing."
"Oh really? And what's that?" I asked, thinking that if it was the one thing I thought she meant, a lot of white boys are pretty much only after that one thing too.
"Sex," she said. "Especially with a white girl!"
"Oh come on," I said. "Do you realize what you're saying?"
"Right," she answered, "I know it sounds racist, but my mother was right. I proved it."
"You're kidding. How?"
"Well, there was this one time that a black boy sat next to me in the cafeteria. And guess what? He asked me out on a date!"
"Um, okay. So? Hasn't a white guy ever asked you out on a date?"
"Sure lots of times." She furrowed her brow in thought. "But it's different, you know? Because like, I'm white. So, it's easier for white guys to ask me out."
"You mean, it shouldn't have been that easy for that black guy to ask for a date?"
"Right. But he did ask, right away like that. So it was obvious, if he was going to ask so soon, even though it was harder to ask, then all he wanted was sex."
"Needless to say, you didn't give it to him. I mean, you didn't agree to a date."
"Of course not. I knew what he was after. My mom was right. I'll never date a black guy."
Now, this was about ten years ago. I hope that attitudes among today's younger white Americans have changed, and that their parents are also less delusional about supposedly predatory black sexuality, and the supposedly heightened threat from black kids of drug use and violence.
Fortunately, that such a generational change is happening appears to be one point of this intriguing new film, Prom Night in Mississippi. From what I can tell, it still lacks a distributor; if so, I hope it finds one, and soon.**
*According to CNN, "Federal courts forced schools in Charleston, Mississippi, to desegregate in 1970, but no judge ordered the high school proms to merge."
**The film will appear on HBO in July.
[h/t to Jessica Yee, who wrote at Racialicious about white oblivion in Canada, where she attended the opening of a photo exhibit based on this film]
In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered racial integration of all schools, including all their events. In 1970, the one high school in Charleston, Mississippi finally allowed blacks to attend, but white parents refused to allow black students to attend the school Graduation Dance.* Thus began a tradition of separate, parent-organized White Proms and Black Proms, a tradition that lasted until, incredibly enough, 2008.
This story is told in a movie that I'm looking forward to, Prom Night in Mississippi. Directed by a Canadian, Paul Saltzman, it covers Morgan Freeman's successful effort to end this racist tradition, by offering to pay for an integrated prom. Or rather, his successful effort to almost end it. Although last year's integrated prom at Charleston High School was a success, a group of white parents still held a separate prom for some white students.
And what are white parents' justifications for allowing their children to attend school with black students, but not the prom?
Saltzman, the film's director, provides this answer: "When I was doing the research and asking people 'What was the problem in having the prom together?' what whites usually said is, 'You know, blacks are into drugs; they're into violence' and on and on and on."
Chasidy Buckley, a black student who attended the integrated prom, provided a similar answer: "A lot of the white parents were concerned about safety. They were afraid that fights were going to break out, but the prom went smoothly. It was great; nobody got hurt or anything."
A rich irony is that while the integrated prom went smoothly, a fight broke out at the whites-only prom.
While unfounded fears of violence fueled white parents' fears, it seems clear that there's another, more covert reason that some don't want their children dancing and partying with black kids--their heads are filled with stereotypical images of black hypersexuality. Many parents fear drinking and fighting at such events, but they also fear heightened possibilities for sexual contact. And, as one white student notes in the clip from Prom Night in Mississippi below, that includes sexy dancing, especially "grinding."
White kids often grind when they're dancing too, but black and white kids grinding together? "Heavens no," many white parents think, "not my daughter!"
I remember talking once to a young white woman from another deep Southern state about her dating experiences in high school. She said she'd only dated white boys, "because like my mother always warned me, everyone knows that black boys are only after that one, single thing."
"Oh really? And what's that?" I asked, thinking that if it was the one thing I thought she meant, a lot of white boys are pretty much only after that one thing too.
"Sex," she said. "Especially with a white girl!"
"Oh come on," I said. "Do you realize what you're saying?"
"Right," she answered, "I know it sounds racist, but my mother was right. I proved it."
"You're kidding. How?"
"Well, there was this one time that a black boy sat next to me in the cafeteria. And guess what? He asked me out on a date!"
"Um, okay. So? Hasn't a white guy ever asked you out on a date?"
"Sure lots of times." She furrowed her brow in thought. "But it's different, you know? Because like, I'm white. So, it's easier for white guys to ask me out."
"You mean, it shouldn't have been that easy for that black guy to ask for a date?"
"Right. But he did ask, right away like that. So it was obvious, if he was going to ask so soon, even though it was harder to ask, then all he wanted was sex."
"Needless to say, you didn't give it to him. I mean, you didn't agree to a date."
"Of course not. I knew what he was after. My mom was right. I'll never date a black guy."
Now, this was about ten years ago. I hope that attitudes among today's younger white Americans have changed, and that their parents are also less delusional about supposedly predatory black sexuality, and the supposedly heightened threat from black kids of drug use and violence.
Fortunately, that such a generational change is happening appears to be one point of this intriguing new film, Prom Night in Mississippi. From what I can tell, it still lacks a distributor; if so, I hope it finds one, and soon.
*According to CNN, "Federal courts forced schools in Charleston, Mississippi, to desegregate in 1970, but no judge ordered the high school proms to merge."
[h/t to Jessica Yee, who wrote at Racialicious about white oblivion in Canada, where she attended the opening of a photo exhibit based on this film]
So today is "Columbus Day" in the United States. Many other countries in "the Americas" also mark this day, and since those of us in the U.S. like three-day weekends, we're technically observing it on the wrong day. The date of Christopher Columbus' first sighting of land that came to be known as "America" occurred on October 12, yesterday.
According to Wikipedia (where the easily edited information should always be taken with a proverbial grain of salt), Columbus Day was first celebrated in 1792, in honor of the 300th anniversary of Columbus' landing. Columbus was working at the time for the queen of Spain, and his efforts are widely credited with opening the door to Spanish conquest of "the Americas." However, since Columbus himself was Italian, some Italian Americans began, in the mid-1800s or so, celebrating their heritage on Columbus Day.
As a result of this later, dual purpose for the holiday, conflict has arisen when other groups, especially Native Americans, beganprotesting this holiday. And for anyone who might still wonder why anyone would protest Columbus Day, Andrea Robideau, leader of a university-level Native American Women's Association, put it this way: “For a lot of native people, making Columbus Day a national holiday tells us that they honor someone who started a genocide against our people.” Robideau put it that way while she was selling "Killumbus" t-shirts.
Some Italian Americans take such protests against Columbus Day as an insult to their own heritage--or perhaps, to what remains of it, after they and their ancestors have bleached away most of what marked them as Italian, one part of the price they paid for their ticket into American whiteness.
After their ancestors endured that cultural loss so that they and their descendants could enjoy being "white," along came widespread recognition of non-whiteness via the Civil Rights Movement, and then the ascent in the 1990s of multiculturalism and/or "diversity," which mostly meant racial diversity. All of this new racial awareness and celebration made "white" people feel left out at times, as well as a bit icky about their own whiteness. After all, the only people affirming and celebrating that racial group were those who'd done weird things with their heads, like putting pointy white sheets on them, or shaving them, or filling them with ridiculous, disproven ideas about the supposed superiority of a supposedly threatened white race.
So, as fewer and fewer "white" people wanted to claim that racial grouping in some active, celebratory way, more and more of them turned instead to revival of the faded heritage of their European ancestors--and not just Italian Americans.
In an article about this kind of "ethnic revival," scholar Matthew Frye Jacobson writes: The leader of an anti-racism workshop in the 1990s once noted a disquieting inclination on the part of white participants to dissociate themselves from the advantages of whiteness by emphasizing some purportedly not-quite-white ethnic background. "I'm not white; I'm Italian," one would say. Another, "I'm Jewish." After this ripple had made its way across the group, the seminar leader was left wondering, "What happened to all the white people who were here just a minute ago?"
The sense of a sentence like "I'm not white, I'm Italian" rests upon several historical preconditions, now loosely relayed in the term "ethnic revival": the Civil Rights Movement heightened whites' consciousness of their skin privilege, rendering it both visible and newly uncomfortable. The example of black nationalism and later multiculturalism provided a new language for -- and perceived cache in -- the specificities of an identity that was not simply "American." After decades of striving to conform to the Anglo-Saxon standard, descendants of earlier European immigrants quit the melting pot. Italianness, Jewishness or Greekness were now badges of pride, not shame.
One unfortunate result, Jacobson goes on to note, is the tendency to hold up European immigrants as the real "model minority," a highly dubious honor normally given to Asian Americans:
Despite recent fixations on Asian-American success . . . European immigrants remain the nation's real "model minority": Their saga supplies the "standard" template of incorporation and advancement against which all other groups are judged. It supplied the post-slavery, fresh-off-the-boat innocents who have become the most potent symbol in protests against affirmative action, busing or reparations.
In conservative populism, white ethnics represent precisely those little people so in need of protection from the excesses of liberal social policy; and their exemplary mobility--from steerage to ghetto to suburb--is deployed in damning critique of both the contemporary welfare state and contemporary ghetto-dwellers.
As the following two TV clips demonstrate, the conflicted feelings felt by people who can be described (rather oxymoronically) as "white ethnics" have made their way into popular culture. In the first, from "The Sopranos," New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano tries, in his usual NSFW way, to articulate his mixed allegiances--being Italian versus being white--to some of his loyal minions, who are upset about upcoming protests against a Columbus Day parade. The next clip, from "Mad TV," satirizes both Italian American stereotypes and the whitening process of assimilation.
I think that in both cases, the alternating sympathies of such "white ethnics" are on display, in a confused dance of sorts between polar attractions--the comforts and privileges of whiteness, and the warm, nostalgic embrace of a group identity that seems more worthy of embrace.
So what do you think? Should Columbus Day celebrations continue? If the holiday doesn't deserve total abolition, how could it be marked instead? And if those questions don't get your fingers moving, what are you doing today? Did you at least get the day off?
For each of the 21 medical students who enter the room, Edna's fears are still to be discovered. They each see the same 55-year-old woman, each meet with the same brown eyes. They all hear the same Southern twang in her voice and the same tremor of fear when she asks if she could have cancer. The only difference is that 12 of the students see a dark-skinned version of Edna, and the other nine students see a light-skinned version.
Edna is a computer-animated image projected life-size on the side of a white wall, and she is used in a study monitoring the interactions of medical students with virtual patients. The study, which has three of five authors from [the University of Florida], found white medical students were less empathetic toward black virtual patients in one-on-one interviews.
I’ve written before on how angry I was when fellow progressives began to inform me that while some Jews consider themselves white, it’s only because they’ve assimilated into white culture. They never explained what white-looking Jews actually are, if not white, but the message was always clear: if we Ashkenazi (Eastern European) Jews think we’re white, well, it’s just because we wanted some of that tasty privilege so badly that we suppressed our real identity to get it. I’d known, of course, that many white extremists still considered Jewishness a race, but hearing such comments come from leftists surprised and upset me for a couple of reasons: 1) they were presuming to know more about a Jew’s identity than a Jew would, and 2) those who were people of color were surely familiar with the frustration at having others dictate how they should define themselves.
Lander didn't set out to write an academic treatise on whiteness. Rather, he set out to joke about it. What sets it apart from the hundreds of other well-written, funny Web sites is that it's hit a nerve--especially because it appeared at a time when America was captivated by the issue of race in the presidential primary. And so it's worth thinking about exactly what this blog tells us about whiteness and why its mostly white, affluent audience has so enthusiastically embraced this gently mocking rundown of their culture. . . . Stuff White People Like is a "safe" place for white people to talk about race . . .
During my job search, I noticed that when I would go to a job bank, I was treated differently in comparison to minorities. The agents grilled me, not to help me get a job, but to find out why I didn’t have one. They wanted to know what I had done to make myself so poor. They also asked why I didn’t have a family member who could help me. Did they ask this just because I’m white? As someone holding a philosophy degree I cannot help but be, well, philosophical. Without a college degree you can’t earn a living wage, and without paying for college you cannot get a degree. If your parents don’t make a lot of money or if you don’t earn scholarships, then you will have to take out many student loans. When you leave school and can’t find a job, you can find yourself back where you started. Being any particular race doesn’t help you at all when you belong to the lowest socioeconomic class and you’re struggling to pull yourself up. I am white but throughout my life I have not known white privilege. Not in the least.
How much longer do white people believe they can use the I have a "black friend" card to cover their clearly racist behaviour? . . . I think I have finally figured out the mystery of the black friend...he/she is imaginary aren't they? ...Yep, your "pretend buddy" that you can whip out every time the word racist is thrown your way. Here is a little tip, next time you go to pull the "black friend" out of your defence arsenal, please be aware that this excuse has worn thin, and we (anti-racists) are on to your sorry, lying asses.
L. F. Eason III, a white North Carolina state manager with a distinguished record of state employment . . . was forced to retire (in reality, fired) because he would not allow the employees at his laboratory to lower the flag to honor one of the most infamous of the white-racist advocates ever to serve in the U.S. Senate, the unrepentant anti-civil-rights advocate, Senator Jesse Helms.
The premise is that this white guy who has an affinity for dipping into the chocolate goes on a TV show and chooses between a dozen or so sistas to find his true love. If VH1 airs this show, they’re going to have a lot of explaining to do. And no, it’s not a Robert DeNiro production.
And finally, a video that may well suggest--contrary to what I've been periodically saying on this blog--that perhaps white people should NOT dance more often than they do.
This blog has reached the 100-post mark, and it's great to see that the anti-racism effort I started here three months ago is steadily gaining a wider audience (the page-view counter at the bottom should reach 50,000 today). The readership here is clearly diverse, and in ways beyond race, as evinced by the lively Comments sections.
And as the sampling below from other blogs indicates, the word about "stuff white people do" is spreading--in a good way.
All of which makes me want to pause for a moment of celebration. In fact, it makes me . . . want to . . . dance! (Stop me when I'm starting to sound too much likeEllen.)
For instructions on how to dance along, see the video at the bottom of this post.
Regular programming of the serious sort will resume momentarily. . .
[L]ast night, thanks to a comment by Professor Zero, I discovered a new blog called Stuff White People Do. The author is smart, right on the target, introspective and clever. He reads all the same books as I do, watches all the same movies, and shares many of the same opinions. And he's written almost as much in the past ninety days as I wrote all last year.
I was tired when I reached SWPD last night and after about an hour on the site, I decided that I'm no longer necessary to the blogosphere, after all . . . Then, I remembered what I had learned the night before (see this post), so I shook off the feeling and just celebrated the blog. . . . if you haven't read Macon D. over at Stuff White People Do yet, then let me send you on over there post haste.
Just recognize that you're probably gonna be there for a while.
Stuff White People Do: This is fantastic, and part of that is how the blog is still struggling to understand what it is about. I've written about the blog before, and rather recently. I've been reading it for much longer, when I saw it buried in a comment thread at Stuff White People Like. The blog then was rough, and a little glib. Now it's matured into something that is still rough, but does an excellent job of showcasing the uncomfortable discussions of race and privilege. The unspoken last part of the title is "Stuff White People Do (with privilege that enables them to ignore race and to affirm white identity while paying lip service to racial equality)". That's a lot of subtext, and the blog bears it in a properly uncomfortable way. And it does that in a really good way. It's hard to recommend something that sounds so unpleasant, but the experience is worth it, and it isn't as bad as it first seems. It's the learning kind of uncomfortable, not the terror kind.
Learning about race and sociology at the University completely changed how I view the world. Obviously, I still participate in the benefits of white privilege, because all white people get those whether they want them or not (which, by the way, is an important thing for all whites to recognize, lest we run around with the attitude of "I'm not racist, so therefore solving racism is about changing those other racist people"). But the thing that really gets under my skin is when people assume that racism is a dormant problem that is either already solved, or an issue that we can't do anything to change. The blog Stuff White People Do looks at the effects of white privilege from the point of view of a white dude named Macon D, in order to help people understand the ways in which they're participating in the continuation of racism. . . .
I also found it interesting that Macon D states that his goal in producing the blog is to write explicitly about whiteness. He says that
I’ve noticed, for instance, that when I ask white individuals to talk about whiteness, about what their being white means for them, they usually have very little to say, and they eventually end up talking about non-white people instead. White Americans are usually unaccustomed to talking directly about their own whiteness, and when asked to do so, they often shift to discussing it in relation to other races, and then end up talking almost exclusively about those other people instead. ("sit quietly in movie theaters - part two")
Personally, I think the reason that the reason white scholars try to stay away from examinations of whiteness is because they don't want to appear to be reducing the discussion to a white viewpoint. As in, "even though minorities have endured centuries of enslavement and abuse, racism is really all about white people in the end." But if white people are racist, and especially if they are unknowingly so, doesn't the solution to the problem lie in getting them to recognize their behavior as racist, and then encouraging them to change it? It seems to me that instead of white people "learning" to "accept" minorities, racism should be dealt with by demonstrating to whites that they are the ones that are flawed, because they buy into the idea that minorities are "different" in the first place.
Blogs such as Stuff White People Do are so instrumental in drawing attention to the blatant privilege present in our society today. It's good to see that readers are getting all riled up in the Comments section of the posts, because it gives me hope that perhaps there are still some individuals out there who are engaged in an ongoing discussion about racism and classism, and are committed to making a change.
As I said above, all of this is cause for a pause, a celebratory pause. And as regular SWPD readers know, I think white people should dance more often--so here we go.
And for my totally serious readers, there is a lesson here, especially for white parents: "Get them started young!"
To a Child Dancing in the Wind
I
DANCE there upon the shore; What need have you to care For wind or water’s roar? And tumble out your hair That the salt drops have wet; Being young you have not known The fool’s triumph, nor yet Love lost as soon as won, Nor the best labourer dead And all the sheaves to bind. What need have you to dread The monstrous crying of wind?
II
Has no one said those daring Kind eyes should be more learn’d? Or warned you how despairing The moths are when they are burned, I could have warned you, but you are young, So we speak a different tongue.
O you will take whatever’s offered And dream that all the world’s a friend, Suffer as your mother suffered, Be as broken in the end. But I am old and you are young, And I speak a barbarous tongue.
William Butler Yeats (Responsibilities and Other Poems, 1916)
This video combines my interests in white world-traveling and white dancing, but I'm not sure what to say about it in either of those terms.
Is Matt Harding doing good work here as a sort of benevolent cultural ambassador, cheering up people all over the globe? Or is he merely using masses of undifferentiated Others as props for a self-serving, self-aggrandizing performance, as a white American dork who thinks he has the right to go and dance wherever he damn well pleases?
we ain't here to steal your women well, at least that wasn't the plan there's that closet smell makes you think you've been inside there too long you're almost mystical and i'm impossible we need a miracle a miracle
don't say i'm paranoid it's more like just annoyed maybe a bit destroyed a bit destroyed and there's nowhere else for us to run and our time has sure as hell become and life has just begun it's just begun
The Dears seem to be singing here about the days of segregation.
Back in the day, that is, when whites forcefully cordoned off or outright excluded non-whites from such things as parties, dances, graduation ceremonies, drinking fountains, swimming pools, country clubs, movie theaters, restaurants, schools, weddings, funerals, sporting events, restrooms, neighborhoods, jails, front-door entrances and exits, cemeteries, political offices, bus seats, train seats and train cars, gas stations, houses, apartments, barbershops, churches, locker rooms, hotels, motels, parks, stores, child-adoption rights, military units, bowling alleys, pool halls, bars, mental hospitals and other health-care facilities, interracial relationships, liquor stores, sidewalks, land ownership, workplaces, sports teams, reparations, musical groups, libraries, postal services, orphanages and other child-care facilities, textbooks, government services, and public telephones,
and also from such activities as
voting, accusing white people of lying, using white people's first names, offering to shake hands with a white person, kissing or hugging each other in public, staying in any of thousands of entire towns after dark (and often during the daytime too), commenting upon the appearance of a white female, cursing or laughing derisively at a white person, being in white neighborhoods without a specific reason, recreating with white people (including such activities as boating and playing checkers or dominoes), claiming or demonstrating superior knowledge or intelligence to those of any white person, suggesting that a white person is inferior in any way (even to other white persons), and defending oneself or one's friends or family members from an array of white forms of physical, mental, emotional, and sexual attack.
Between the end of the Civil War and the end of the Civil Rights Movement, white people really, really did not want to be around non-white people, especially black ones. In the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, they also severely restricted the activities of non-white people.
But white folks aren't like that anymore.
Right?
[I compiled the above lists from several printed and online sources--if you think of more examples, please let me know in the comments, or by email ( unmakingmacon@gmail.com ) and I will add yours to this post. Among the more useful sites for details on what the era of American Apartheid was like is Ferris State University's online Jim Crow Museum.]
thanks to what they’ve come to think of themselves and of others
it’s actually true: most white people can’t dance
at least not very well
but when they get up and move against the life-long contra-distinctive training that tells them it’s other people who embody The Body and thus can move those bodies well
and that it’s white people who embody The Brain and thus can’t move their bodies well
then when white people dance it can be a sweet thing to see
but such waltzing is not easy
any time a caged white bird sings through its body the audacious hope that its fettered existence isn’t permanent and that it too has a dream
the audience response is not without laughter
but amidst the catcalls at the pratfalls and the tight white lips and the creaky jerky hips
the better laughter expresses not derision and condemnation but appreciation and admiration
so dance white people shake off your money-makers proclaim your emancipation
rock your white houses until their doors pop open and your spirits find their light
White folks got it goin' on! At least, when they borrow stuff from other people to help them get it goin' on:
There's not much goin' on with whiteness that white people want to embrace. So, when they do want to embrace something and be cool in the process, they usually reach across racial gaps and grab something:
That's a white guy, dressed as an Indian (his real name? Pale Foot). Paying "honor" and "respect" to the Indians, of course. Do you think the white guy dressed up here as the University of Illinois mascot knows WHICH Indians "sold" the land on which that university now squats?
UPDATE: Did you know that edgy actor Juliette Lewis is in a rock band? Andshe knows just how to add some feisty spunk to her rocker-chick persona:
In an article inspired by this image, Jessica Yee writes:
We in the Native community have to witness this with every kid who dresses up like Pocahontas on Halloween, or every time we turn on the TV to watch the Redskins, Braves, or Indians play. In fact it’s been going on for so damn long that we’re kinda the only race who it’s still happening to on this extreme, public level, to the point where the fight has basically died down. Or has it?
What I find most interesting though about all this imagery, and in particular Lewis’s choice of dress with her band, is actually coming from my raging feminist point of view. In an attempt to appear strong, raw, and unapologetic, people, and in this case, a woman, [Lewis] feels like she has to appropriate Native culture to a pretty extreme extent in order to do a good job of it.
I used to think Juliette Lewis was kind of cool. Well, maybe she doesn't ridiculize herself all that often by dressing up in redface.
