think of the americas as empty before white people came

White people in America, and in Canada, have complex feelings and thoughts about the people who occupied the land before them. We long called them "Indians," largely with derision, and then many of us took to calling them Native Americans, thereby at least acknowledging the fact that they were here first.

Nowadays, white people are rarely as openly racist as we once were toward indigenous people. In fact, we have many ways of claiming that much to the contrary, we like, respect, and "honor" them -- from romantically grasping for supposed Native American blood in our ancestry, to decorating our bodies and homes with Native American objects, to claiming that cartoonish sports-team mascots are somehow respectful, instead of insultingly reductive.

When we're not claiming that we admire Native Americans -- or rather, their forefathers and foremothers, since our romanticized conceptions of them are all frozen in some distant, dreamy past, with next to nothing to do with today's actual Native American people -- when we're not claiming to admire them, we pretty much forget about them. Basically, we continue to more or less erase them.

I was reminded of this invidious erasure when I saw this Canadian ad for Hudson's Bay Clothing Company at boy louie's blog; this ad ran before the Olympics on Canadian TV (which is why I, living in the U.S., had never seen it).



(Transcript)

This ad, full of restlessly moving, and then exercising white people, is entitled "We Were Made for This." I find the ad stirring and well produced, with great cinematography and music and so on. But then, like boy louie, I can't help but wonder who this "we" is: "The 'we' this Bay ad refers to is not the inclusion of all Canadian people, it is the exclusive group of white, European people who came to Canada and conquered it as their own."

It doesn't take long at all for me to see this celebratory, triumphant ad as horribly racist. Although it may include one or two non-white people, its depiction of the relentless march of Euro-Canadian progress mostly just erases indigenous people, as well as other kinds of non-white people who now populate Canada. This erasure occurs in the imagery of mostly white people moving across snowy landscapes, but also in the very first line of narration: "We arrived 340 years ago, to a land of ice, rock, and snow."

A rugged landscape indeed, a real challenge for "us." A perfect, and perfectly blank, canvas for the adventures of an ever-restless (white) people. But of course, this geographical canvas can only be imagined as blank before "our" arrival because its original people have been blithely, arrogantly erased from it.

In terms of race, then, this Canadian "we" is a lot like the American "we" -- all too often, it's an unspoken "white" we.

I'm reminded of, of all things, a famous poem by Robert Frost. When he was a white-haired octogenarian, Frost read this poem from memory, on a blustery winter day (oh, the snowy white irony, yet again!) at President Kennedy's inauguration.*


The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

Once again, stirring words, inspirational even, until I get to thinking about who Frost's "we" is. The "colonials" were primarily British, and as they created a country, these people came to identify as "Anglo-Saxons," the "real" or "most" white people in an ever-morphing hierarchy of whiteness. And once again, Frost speaks of "the land" as if it was empty -- still unstoried, artless, unenhanced -- before white people came along to claim it as a gift. Maybe indigenous people are included in that line about "deeds of war"? But even then, they're cordoned off from the real story, the story about "us" and the formation of "our" country, by parentheses.

I've often wondered -- how did Native Americans hear this poem when Frost read it aloud to the nation, in 1961? And how did other non-white people hear it, just as the Civil Rights Movement was gathering steam to truly challenge and fight back against that great white "we"?

And now, after watching this recent Hudson Bay ad, I also wonder, yet again, nearly fifty years after Robert Frost announced, in front of yet another white president, just who "we" were -- when will white people ever stop assuming that in so many different social arenas, they belong at the absolute, triumphant, dead center of things?



* You can watch "the grand old man," Robert Frost, read his poem at Kennedy's inauguration here, at about 36 minutes. Frost had written a long preface to the poem for the occasion; apparently, the sun was so bright that he couldn't read his type-written pages, so he instead recited "The Gift Outright" from memory, changing "such as she would become" at the end to "such as she will become."

claim that rap isn't music

This is a guest post by PMS Rhino.


I overheard a conversation today that bugged me a bunch, and then I realized that I'd heard this conversation probably a billion times before, and that I have even, much to my dismay at my younger self, participated in at times.

White people REALLY love to debate whether rap is music or not.

Many white people constantly degrade rap for a supposed lack of musical notes, for only having a beat, and for being classified more as poetry than music. They even get on the lyrics ("it's all chest thumping and degrading women,” etc.).

But seriously, I've never heard people wonder if Beethoven is music. If punk rock is music. If heavy metal is music. If country is music. Not once. If trance is music.

And it's so easy to find ways to discount those genres as music too. If you define music as having lyrics, then classical and trance is out. If you define music as an aurally pleasant string of notes, then a lot of punk and metal and industrial is out. If you classify music as requiring a strong back beat, country would generally be out, along with a lot of alternative music. Any musical genre can be discounted in some form or fashion, and yet rap is the only musical genre I have ever heard white people debate.

I don't even want to get started on the whole "chest thumping and degrading women" train of thought. While many rap lyrics contain these themes, so many other genres that do the exact same shit. Older rock music was FULL of lyrics about living a life of drugs and sex and violence, where women were nothing but groupies and sex objects to write songs about. Country can be just as bad (generally minus the drugs part, though). And even if we get into the more pop-songy stuff, classifying women as damsels in distress or delicate flowers waiting for a man isn't much better either.

Is there a musical blinder that white people wear so they can't see this? Is this common criticism a case of, "I don't like rap music [which maybe means, I don’t like black people?], therefore I can find more stuff wrong with it than the music I love and listen to"?

White people are rarely willing to recognize the huge amount of talent that most rap music requires. Won't acknowledge it in the slightest. It's “black people music” that's only about drugs and sex and violence. Or it's “not even music,” in which case the complainer can never seem to decide what it is, if not music.

I suspect this is all another semantic way to “other” minorities and their music yet again. Especially when you take into account that basically the only place men and women of color can get a musical career is in R&B, hip hop or rap (or another appropriately ethnic music genre). I don't know many punk bands or rock bands or country bands or pop or whatever include minorities. Those are pretty white musical genres out there.

So when white people say rap isn't music, they pretty much mean it's not music because it's black. Which pisses me off to no end. As does the fact that this debate is so constant and so consistent. I've heard it many, many times, and I can be fairly certain taht many other White people have heard it too. And even engaged in it.

Side note: I remember going to high school dances where the DJ would play a mix of all types of music. At smaller functions it was easier to notice, but the dance floor changed with genres. When "music" (white people music) was playing, all the white kids would jump up and dance their hearts out. When rap was playing, all the white kids quickly left the dance floor, and if more than one rap song would play in a row, every so often you'd hear a grumble about “why they have to play this rap stuff or whatever,” with such disdain. I danced to whatever, a beat was a beat, but the contempt many of my white friends and acquaintances held, because "how dare they play rap?!", was amazing.

So yeah, this kind of debate about the musical validity of rap has gotten on my nerves more and more, as I've heard it over and over again. And today I just didn't even want to get into it with these people. Generally, the people who don’t think rap is music cannot be swayed to think otherwise, no matter what you say about it.

The "debate" is more a statement of feelings and beliefs that the White person has, and they feel that their beliefs are completely correct, and they will never be convinced that rap is music. Oh, but it's okay if you like rap, they're not trying to tell you what to listen to. It's just not music. You can still like it, just don't think it's music like their white bands are. That would just be silly and ignorant. So there.

Is this something that other people notice too? Or did I just happen to hang around with particularly asshole-ish groups of people?

segregate muslims and asians from other renters

Kudos to Daneisha Davis, a leasing agent who says she was ordered to segregate Islamic and Asian apartment renters from other people.

Ms. Davis and a co-worker, Michelle Williams, used to work for "StoneBridge at Bear Creek Complex" in Euless, Texas, and they've chosen to come forward and expose the organization's apparently racist housing practices:

"If somebody called over the phone inquiring about an apartment, we were told that if they have an accent or a different name that we are supposed to tell them that we didn't have anything available,” said Daneisha Davis, who worked there for a year-and-a-half.

Michelle Williams was Davis’ co-worker. She says Stonebridge’s manager told her, on a regular basis, to turn away potential walk-in renters if they looked Asian or Middle Eastern.

"Make it undesirable for them to want to come back,” is what Williams says she was told. "Even though we were only 80 percent full, or 75 percent full. We had plenty of apartments we could've rented out."

"She referred to them as 'curry people.' And they used curry to cook with, that they smelled bad and they were dirty,” said Davis.

"Wow. Wow. That's unfortunate,” said AbdulNasir Jangda, an Imam at the Islamic Association for the Mid-Cities. “When we start grouping people together, we're creating a very divisive element. How are we supposed to understand and relate and appreciate one another if we can't stand to live next together?"

In January, Davis filed a Federal Fair Housing complaint against Stonebridge, alleging discrimination. The complaint made, via e-mail, was sent on a Saturday.

The next Tuesday, Davis was reassigned to other properties inside the company.

She has since quit and is looking for work. . . .

You can read the rest here

make non-white people feel marginalized in their own countries

This is a guest post by Doreen Yomoah, a vagabond currently living in Ghana. She's also a founding mother of the Women’s Liberation Army, a motley crew of women scattered throughout the globe who are sick of injustice and planning to do something about it.


I currently reside in Accra, Ghana, where I am a citizen and a member of the ethnic majority (the Ga). However, this is the first time I’ve even been in Ghana since I was 7 (and the first time I’ve lived here since I was one). One day, I was at a bar and met a white woman. My hair was in cornrows. I ran into her later, when my hair was in twists. When we met, she started going on and on about how interesting and intricate African hair is, and how she “wishes she could do that with her hair.” ( I could write a whole other post on white girls telling me how they “wish they could do that with their hair,” and then turning around and putting their hands in my hair like I'm a goddamn dog and asking me stupid questions like “where is your real hair?” It’s in my pocket. Where the hell do you think it is?)

I asked this woman if she really wanted to sit for eight hours to have her hair done, and she expressed shock and disbelief, asking if that was really what it took. Then she went on to say how “new” and “trendy” my hairstyle was, and I told her that braiding and twisting have been around for CENTURIES, and that my hair was no more interesting than hers was. She once again expressed shock to find out that braids aren’t a new style, and reluctantly agreed that my hair was no more interesting than hers.

This fawning and seemingly complimentary commentary about our hair is just another way to other black people. It’s as though she sees her hair as being “regular” hair, and our hair is some weird, exotic, abnormal characteristic. But when you’re in a country where the vast majority of its inhabitants possess (naturally, although a ridiculous percentage of women are relaxing their hair) a certain phenotype and you don't, you’re actually the one with the “weird” hair, not us.

On another occasion, my cousin and I went to a pub frequented by expats, and I swear to Gryffindor, when we walked in, I could hear crickets chirping. Every single patron in the place was white (with the exception of one Asian American woman), and every single server was black. It felt more like 1958 in Birmingham, AL, rather than 2009 in Accra, GH. The white patrons all looked at us as if to say “What are these negroes doing in here?”

“Oh hell, no,” I thought. It’s one thing for me to feel unwelcome and uncomfortable when I am in a bar in America, but there is no way I am going to be made to feel like some kind of an intruder into your “whites only” space in my OWN DAMN COUNTRY.

My third example of this phenomenon -- of white othering of non-white people in non-white contexts -- didn’t take place in Ghana, and it didn’t happen to me. When I was in China, I was tutoring a young Korean girl who attended American school. One day, she asked me why we look different and I explained that over thousands of years, people developed physical characteristics that helped them adapt to the environment around them, such as people developing darker skin to help protect them from the sun, and people developing lighter skin to help them absorb more of the sun’s rays in places where there is an inadequate amount of sun. She then asked what environmental factor led to her developing an epicanthic fold.

Now, not being an evolutionary biologist, I really didn’t know the answer to that, but I was pretty concerned that we were in East Asia, where she was a member of the racial majority (although obviously of a different nationality and ethnicity) and that many, many people (if not most) have that phenotype. And yet, she was still being made to feel like there was something about her eyes that was “different” and wanted to know the reason why she had it. I suspect it had something to do with the population of her school, as she went to the America school in Shanghai (which is overwhelmingly white), and I suspect they had created a microcosm of America there, where once again, people who are members of the racial majority in the country still get othered once they are at school. On a different occasion, one of my (white) colleagues made some comment about Asian people having “funny eyes” and I thought “no, asshole. We’re in CHINA. You’re the one with the funny eyes.”

Finally, here in Ghana, I was sitting one time with two white friends. Let’s call them Bill and Leila. Bill’s (white) colleague spotted him and said hello to him. He DID NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE MY PRESENCE, made eye contact with Leila, and then smiled and greeted her. Bill then introduced the both of us to his boss who reluctantly and half-heartedly shook my hand. When he was leaving, he once again did not acknowledge me and said “bye” to Bill and Leila.

When I tried to point out to the other two what had just happened, they enacted the common white tendency to talk over people of color in order to explain away incidents of racism. This man is in charge of a major American governmental organization whose work primarily focuses on development, and I’m wondering what he's doing here if he has such little respect for the people he is supposed to be helping (although if he had bothered to speak to me, he would've learned that I'm not a local and most of the developments being made aren't things that I've been deprived of anyway), and if he just assumes that any black person he sees isn’t even worth talking to or even acknowledging.

So basically, while non-white people are considered people of color in majority white nations (whether the nation’s indigenous population is white, or if it became majority white through colonialism and genocide), in nations where we are the indigenous population and/or the racial majority, we shouldn’t be seen as “people of color.” We should be seen and treated with the same kind of treatment that “normal” people get in their own countries, and receive the same kind of courtesy that we extend to foreigners (which is something that white people fail to do to POC in their own countries, whether the POC are foreigners or locals who were born and bred in the country).

Has anyone else experienced this othering at the hands of white people, even in situations when they are in the ethnic or racial majority? What do you do or say about it, if anything?

promote hollow forms of diversity, instead of fighting racism (e.g., ucsd)

This is a guest post by Scott Boehm, a Ph.D. student in Literature at UC San Diego. His dissertation considers historical memory, cultural trauma and the Spanish Civil War. He has written for Counterpunch and other publications, and he's the author of an American Quarterly piece, "Privatizing Public Memory: The Price of Patriotic Philanthropy and the Post-9/11 Politics of Display." Scott can be contacted at crossedculture @ yahoo.com


I am a white Ph.D. student in the Literature Department of UC San Diego; I currently live in Spain. From 2004-08, I spent most weekdays on the UCSD campus, including work as a teaching assistant in the Dimensions of Culture Writing Program at UCSD’s Thurgood Marshall College. In 2007, contrary to standard practice for veteran TAs on one-year contracts, I and another TA were not rehired to continue teaching in that program, despite outstanding teaching records, including teaching awards.

The reason?

We were openly critical of how a program and a college that were founded on principles of social justice and the critique of structural inequalities in the United States—particularly those of race, class and gender—had 1) been watered down with meaningless multicultural rhetoric, 2) absorbed much of the racist logic of Proposition 209 (which led the way for the elimination of college admissions policies across the country that included constitutional affirmative action components to redress centuries of discrimination against minorities in higher education), and 3) succumbed to pressure from a conservative watchdog organization that had targeted the program for its supposed liberal “indoctrination” of undergraduate students.

The decision to effectively fire two TAs for being critical of how “diversity” was promoted in ways as hollow as the term itself led to a series of events -- a campus protest, a student walk-out and march to the Chancellor’s office, a teach-in, a “funeral” for academic freedom, a town hall, and extensive press coverage at local (and to some degree national) levels. These events prompted a review of the Dimensions of Culture Program, but very few of the structural changes that a coalition of graduate and undergraduate students, staff, faculty and campus organizations had deemed necessary to improve not only Thurgood Marshall College and its writing program, but also the UCSD campus climate and community as a whole, were adopted.

So, when news of the wave of recent racial incidents on my campus reached me, I was saddened, but far from surprised.

Since information about these incidents is widely available, I will avoid recounting them here. I would, however, like to offer some background on UCSD that might shed some light on the context in which these incidents have occurred.

UCSD celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. From the beginning, the campus was designed as an elite institution driven by scientific research and graduate-level studies, with close ties to the wealthy white La Jolla community that surrounds it, as well as to the U.S. military, which donated the land upon which it sits.

The campus design could be described as “counter-revolutionary,” as it was built in response to widespread campus activism in the 1960sc-- particularly the free speech movement at Berkeley -- and today it is a model for crowd containment and surveillance. The Geisel Library, where a noose was hung on the seventh floor last week, sits at the heart of campus like an all-seeing eye, hovering above students like a Foucauldian panopticon. The library effectively functions as a metaphor for a structure of feeling that’s based on hierarchy and alienation, phenomena that permeate most layers of the institution.

The university has an elite college system that divides undergraduate students (as well as faculty) into six different colleges, via a fairly arbitrary system. This arrangement effectively keeps students alienated from each other, while promoting distinctions among them. Thurgood Marshall College, originally named Third College (and almost called Lumumba-Zapata College due to political pressure by a coalition of students of color -- including Angela Davis -- and a few white radicals -- including Herbert Marcuse -- pushing for an institutional space that served the needs of Black and Chicano students), is without a doubt UCSD’s key multicultural advertisement. This college is highlighted in recruiting materials to market the university as minority-friendly, when in reality, UCSD’s Black population has never exceeded 3% of the student body. Considering the university’s geographical location, the case is not much better for Chicano and Latino students, who make up 13% of the current student body.

UCSD is a rather hostile place for human beings in general, due to a ruthless quarter system designed to promote scientific research and thwart political organizing; extreme pressure to produce, perform and achieve; a lack of social life and amenable campus; and, as I said, an architecture of alienation and surveillance. However, such hostility is magnified for Black, Chicano and Latino students, who since the 1960s have expressed their need for safe campus spaces, as well as the need to increase minority recruitment and retention, and to provide a curriculum that critically examines structural inequalities (the Lumumba-Zapata College movement included “whiteness studies” as a part of such a curriculum component decades before Peggy McIntosh started unpacking her knapsack). The answer of university administrators has almost always been to ignore such requests.

Today, Chancellor Fox is confronted with yet another generation of UCSD students of color who are angry, hurt and terrorized, not only at what has happened on (and off) campus, but also at the administration’s response to those events and its complicity in the construction of a campus atmosphere in which such things have occurred. As usual, the administration’s response has been lackluster, off-key and seemingly motivated by damage/image-control, and not by a genuine understanding of the issues -- a PR campaign that attempts to cover up the daily violence perpetuated by a university built upon disdain for the needs of all of its students. This daily, institutional violence particularly affects those groups who are most vulnerable, because they are the least represented and because their respective cultures are not integrated into the university curriculum or campus life in any meaningful way. (I should also note that the majority of their professors and TAs are overwhelmingly white, providing them with few role models and tenured advocates.)

UCSD’s website, which gives the appearance of addressing the issues that have surfaced over the past weeks, exemplifies such Band-Aid politics. The homepage currently invites people to “Join the Battle Against Hate,” and it features an image of a black and white pin that says “Racism: Not In Our Community.” The first slogan is predictably abstract and vague, an invitation that few could refuse, and one that offers the appearance of an administration that takes these things seriously. The second one is an outright lie, all too reminiscent of the 1980s “Just Say No” campaign against drugs (and we all know how well that one worked out).

Indeed, if UCSD is a community at all, it is -- among other things -- most definitely a racist one. The recent “ungrateful nigger” comments, the “Compton lynching” sign in the campus television studio, and the noose hung in the library provide clear evidence of that. But, these incidents -- as awful as they are -- are merely symptoms of a much larger problem festering at the core of this so-called institution of higher learning. While these racist incidents must be dealt with -- swiftly, unequivocally, and with justice -- they are not exactly what needs to be treated (and not superficially bandaged over).

These incidents are examples of what Freud called “the return of the repressed.” They’re the sudden explosion of painful campus truths that normally don’t see the light of day, but that have been exposed for the entire nation to see. What requires treatment and deep analysis is the fundamental fantasy that UCSD can promote itself as an inclusive, “diverse,” and caring campus community, while perpetuating values and maintaining structures that are in direct conflict with such a virtual image. Just as the primary goal of Lacanian psychoanalysis is for the patient to become conscious of the cause and structure of their desire by exploring personal traumas, so should UCSD administrators examine how the inheritance of the past 50 years of repressive campus policies and politics has contributed to these racist current events. Like any symptom, they do not manifest themselves from nowhere; they have a history.

There is no legitimate reason for administrators to be shocked or to feign indignation at the obvious, which registers with victimized students as being out of touch with campus realities, or simply really bad acting. These racist incidents are -- depressingly -- nothing more or less than the manifestation of the invisible racism that has operated on an everyday basis at UCSD since it was founded in 1960.

The question now is whether the administration is prepared to face a shameful diagnosis and to take concrete steps to reconfigure its desire in ways that better suit the needs of all its students, or whether it will continue the UCSD legacy of posing as one thing -- a university of “excellence” -- and acting like another -- a dehumanized space for the production of human capital in which racism flourishes.


---

FYI: Herbert's Hippopotamus (1996) is an engaging and informative documentary on the early history of UCSD, including Herbert Marcuse's experience while a professor of philosophy there, the Lumumba-Zapata College movement, and student protest against the Vietnam War. The film includes rare footage of Marcuse, Angela Davis and Ronald Reagan.

Google Video has it for free:
Herbert's Hippopotamus

force people of color to bring along racial baggage during vacations

  

This is a guest post for swpd by fromthetropics:


I went sandboarding with an Asian friend a few days ago in a little town 1.5 hours away from the Australian city that I live in. I’m Asian too. And I found it amusing how we reacted to some things while on the trip. It reminded me of an earlier post by macon entitled "swpd: go on racially trouble-free vacations." Of course, since he's white and I'm not, our vacationing experiences were very different. The opposite, to be precise.

(about-australia.com)

As my friend and I drove into a car park at the foot of the sand dunes, I noticed that the people parked next to us were looking our way and saying stuff to each other. I got anxious, and I thought out loud, “Are they looking at us? Why? Are we parked in the wrong place? Is it my car? Is it because it's a sedan while everyone else's is a 4WD? Does it look out of place? But this is the only car I own. Or are they looking at the guys behind us?”

As my thoughts ran on like that, I had a flashback to the time when I went to a country town with my family, and we came across Asians tourists who were loud and seemed unaware of how out of place they or their white Mercedes looked in that small town. It made me wonder how out of place we may have looked (perhaps less than them, but still).

I think this sensation that I experienced in both situations is what W.E.B Dubois famously referred to as “double-consciousness”:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

Before I came across Dubois, I used to call it “split vision.” I made up that term because I needed words to describe how I felt. I would sometimes be with a group of Asians, but my consciousness would then step outside the group, and look at my group with a white person’s eyes. And I would then think, “Man, we must seem so weird and out of place.”

Then I would try to shake it off, and get my consciousness to step back into the group where my body was, and I would say to myself, “Forget about what people think, and just enjoy the moment.”

So my friend and I got out of the car and walked up the dunes for some sandboarding. We never did find out why or whether it was even us that those white people in the car were looking at. It was nice to know that there were at least two other Asian groups there (there were no other poc groups) who were enjoying themselves. I thought, if they’re enjoying it, surely we can too.

Later, we took a break and sat with our legs hanging off the edge of our open car boot. We were chatting and eating some grapes when we noticed a ‘ranger’ (security) pick-up driving slowly by. Then it stopped near our car. I became anxious again.

I said to my friend, “Why is he stopping? Is it because of us? Are we doing something wrong?” She said, “Maybe we’re not allowed to eat here?”

Not allowed to eat in an open air space like that sounded like an utterly ridiculous reason, but still, I echoed her concern as I wondered the same. I said, “Oh gosh, there was a sign at the entrance that told us to make sure we read the ‘important’ sign in the car park area. But I haven’t read it because I didn’t notice any such signs. Maybe it says there what we’re not supposed to do.”

As I said this, I scanned the car park area for signboards. I didn’t see any. I worried that maybe the signboard was on the other side and I had missed it on the way in. Then I had a few flashbacks, one of which was of the time when my family encountered an obviously racist incident during an out of town trip.

After a few minutes, I was relieved when the ranger left without a word. As we finished sandboarding and began leaving the area, I looked around again to check for the ‘important’ signboard. I saw none. I again felt relieved, because we apparently hadn't missed anything.

But then I wondered why I felt so insecure with the presence of a security car. Wasn’t I supposed to feel more secure, knowing that they were there to stop troublemakers? Surely, I should know that two (Asian) women eating grapes don’t look like troublemakers.

When writing about his very different sensations during a trip to Indonesia, Macon wrote, “I now see that having been trained into whiteness made me feel especially entitled to go wherever I liked, and to do pretty much whatever I pleased when I got there, as long I was willing to pay for it.” He also quoted Shannon Sullivan, who says about the different ways that whites feel about themselves in such situations, “As ontologically expansive, white people consider all spaces as rightfully available for their habitation of them.”

But for me, it was the opposite. I was well aware that I was in someone else’s ‘territory’, and that some people might not like my presence, or that I might have done things which were seen as different and conspicuous, just because of what I am. In my case, this different kind of self-awareness meant that I used to avoid out of town trips out of discomfort. But this time around I thought I’d take a plunge, overcome my fears, and so off we went to the dunes. Yet, I was still not free to feel fully at ease.

On the trip home, we bought a soft-serve cone at a park. We didn’t want too much, so we asked for two chocolate dipped baby cones. I hadn't had a chocolate dipped one in a long time, and it was my friend’s first. The elderly white man serving us noticed that my friend was Japanese from the way she spoke, and he started telling us a story about some previous Japanese customers.

He was very friendly, but my first thought was, “Oh no, did we do something embarrassing?” By ‘we,’ I mean everyone who I had never met but who looked ‘Asian’ (a big chunk of the world’s population).

He told us that when the Japanese tourists come in a big bus, they either all order the same thing, or none at all. “Fair enough,” I thought, “it’s kinda typical and it doesn’t offend anyone anyway. No sweat there.”

Then he went on, and told us how a group of Japanese youths ordered one cone and asked for six spoons. I wasn’t surprised but I thought, “Oh shit.” For some reason I put on a surprised look and said, “Noooo, sixxx???” to indicate that I didn’t ‘approve’ of such behavior (not that I cared too much about the behavior itself, though I did think six spoons for one cone was a bit much and embarrassing indeed, except that it has a tendency to give ‘us’ all a bad name). I did this in case he was sharing the story to indicate how cheap or weird Asians were; it wasn't the first time I had heard white people mention the exact same scenario with other food.

He wasn’t finished. He went on to share another story, but this time with a bunch of Chinese customers who shared a cone among the five or six of them. I did the same drill and showed disbelief.

Wide-eyed, I said, “Did they each order some after they tried it?”

“Nah,” he said.

“Are you serious?” I added, to make sure that I put enough of a distance between myself and them.

"They said they go around the world trying ice creams everywhere they go," he said, "and they said that ours is the best one they’ve tried so far."

The story had a positive spin to it, so I quickly took advantage of the positive note and said, “So we’re getting the world’s best ice cream, eh?”

We praised his ice cream, thanked him, and walked off, lest he had a whole stock of ‘Asian’ stories tucked away under his belt.

It turned out to be a trouble-free trip. We ran into quite a few extremely friendly and helpful (white) people. We had sand in our shoes, all over our bodies (even in our ears), and in the car. Plus, I have a ‘redneck’ where I forgot to put sunblock on. We had an awesome time.

But I was bemused at how the littlest thing would trigger a defense mechanism in me. And each time it was triggered, I would get flashbacks of the racially-troubled vacations I had had in the past. Also, it didn’t help that I read this once I got back home. Nor does it help to hear from a friend who recently moved to a small mining town that racism is rife there.

On the ride back, my friend had pointed out the kangaroo road signs warning us to be cautious in case our mascot pops onto the road out of nowhere. She hasn’t been in Australia long, so she asked me if I had ever seen a wild kangaroo on the road. I told her no.

“So why do they have these signs?” she asked.

“I dunno. I guess if you live out in the country for long enough you’ll see a wild one pop out onto the road every so often,” I answered. Otherwise it would be a waste of government money putting up and maintaining all those signs.

I wonder if the way POCs automatically analyze situations for racial overtones is similar to the function of those kangaroo road signs -- if, for those who have lived in that terrain long enough, racism and Othering does happen enough times to warrant a defense mechanism, for the sake of staying physically and emotionally safe?

overlook the inherently racist nature of pool (aka, billiards)

THere's a lot to be said about racism in sports.

But then, how well do we understand that certain sports themselves are inherently racist?




Just kidding, since it's Friday.

Let's Open Thread, shall we?

Is there, for instance, anything more we should know about the whiteness of the Winter Olympics? Or of other sporting events/sports?

What's on your mind, sports related or not (but still, please, "whiteness" related)?


h/t for the Boomerang clip: Damon @ Black & Bougie

perpetuate the idea that "gay" or "lesbian" means "white"

This is a guest post by Josh Friedberg, a gay white male student at Earlham College. Josh is majoring in English and minoring in African & African American Studies, and he's currently researching racialized value judgments in music historiography and criticism.

When you think of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person, what race and class do you associate with that image?

In 2000, World War II historian Allan Bérubé published an essay examining the perception of gay men and the consequences thereof. Bérubé wrote that when asked the above question, his students invariably perceived "gay men" as "white and well-to-do."

"In the United States today," Bérubé wrote, "the dominant image of the typical gay man is a white man who is financially better off than most everyone else."

Despite progress in LGBT rights, ten years after the publication of Bérubé's essay, “How Gay Stays White, and What Kind of White it Stays,” some things haven't changed. Regardless of exceptions, the majority of people, at least in the U.S., still perceive LGBT people as white and wealthy.

This image stays ingrained not only for overt homophobes, but within LGBT culture as well.

Bérubé examined how the image of gays as monolithically privileged manifested itself, in attempts to assimilate LGBT people into mainstream society and in the curtailing of LGBT rights. He also examined what he called the “selling” of gay whiteness in order to garner favor from corporate and governmental authorities, as well as the use of “race analogies” that compare sexual marginalization to racial marginalization.

In the 1990s, politicians voted against gay rights measures, including in the battle over gays in the military, and then defended their votes by claiming that gays already have privilege -- an idea which only makes sense if you conceive of LGBT people as homogeneously white and wealthy.

And today, organizations like the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) still sell the image of assimilation to try to prove that LGBT people are “just like everybody else.” Such efforts include the HRC's Buying for Equality guide, which encourages consumers to support LGBT-friendly corporations.

To be sure, this sounds like a good idea, but the HRC has given awards to companies with documented histories of racist practices -- like Abercrombie -- thereby separating sexual oppression from racial or class-based oppression.

This example points to a larger problem: such an assimilationist ethic, which ignores the overlap between race, class, and sexuality, has resulted in the marginalization of LGBT people of color from activist discourse on LGBT rights.

To be fair, unprecedented numbers of LGBT professors of color have gained prominence in the academy over the last two decades, so that certainly is progress.

But before Proposition 8 passed in 2008, banning gay marriage in California, LGBT activists of color noted how racial discrimination within anti-prop 8 organizations silenced their ideas. As Kai Wright noted in an article for ColorLines magazine, these activists foresaw the passing of Prop 8 and tried to institute changes in the assimilationist strategies used to attempt to gain votes, but to no avail.

And yet the selling of gays as white and wealthy continues.

A few years ago Dwight A. McBride, a gay black professor who is currently a dean at University of Illinois-Chicago, published an essay on “the gay marketplace of desire.” McBride described how pornography, print media, online dating services, and other institutions largely cater to white male consumers, often by using racist stereotypes about various gay men of color.

This is undoubtedly still the case; one look through a mainstream LGBT publication or website will confirm that.

And egregious race analogies continue as well: after Prop 8, one such magazine, The Advocate, published a cover story declaring that “Gay is the New Black.” The story's author did not interview or mention a single gay black person and posed LGBT rights and black rights as comparable.

The problem is that only white people can compare any oppression to racial oppression; blacks, for example, can't say that their oppression is like racial oppression, because they already are racially oppressed.

In addition, the myth that LGBT people are homogeneously white and wealthy yields a number of other myths. One is that some people of color have called homosexuality “a white thing,” dismissing the idea that LGBT people are in their communities.

Another is the myth that LGBT people should be grateful for what they have—which could hold true if you're talking about race and class privilege among white and upper-class LGBT folks.

However, such a myth ignores the rights that LGBT people have long been denied, ones that heterosexuals can take for granted, including the rights to marry, to not face employment discrimination based around sexuality or gender identity, or to know that hate crimes against you can be treated as hate crimes.

So here's what I'm asking all of us to do -- challenge the stereotypes that are so prevalent, acknowledge race and class along with sexuality and gender identity, and help break down how gay stays white.

In his groundbreaking essay, Allan Bérubé asked, "How does the category 'gay man' become white? What are the whitening practices that perpetuate this stereotype, often without awareness or comment by gay white men?"

Bérubé’s death in 2007 should not leave such questions unexplored. We must educate ourselves, learning about racism and classism in addition to homophobia, sexism, and other types of oppression.

We must learn that ignoring or separating any type of oppression from another is a result of privileged ignorance, and it will remain so as long as gay stays white

seek authenticity

A reader who signed her email "K" writes,

I've been following your blog for a while, and I really appreciate your efforts to interrogate and deconstruct racism, racial identity and racial reflexes. Although a lot of the discussions in the comments are kind of over my head, I do diligently try to think about them in order to help me articulate racial incidents in my own everyday life. Just a bit of background -- I'm a mixed-race Asian who has lived in both America and the UK for the last nine years, and majored in English and related literatures as well as writing during university.

I have a white friend who I'm very fond of, and who is very interested in Arabic culture, as an evangelical Christian. As a Muslim myself, we're used to having clashes of opinion -- sometimes not pretty ones -- and so we are also used to working through these disagreements, agreeing to disagree, and doing so in a respectful manner (hopefully), although obviously the initial clash is always jarring and rife with emotion. She recently moved to Egypt, and this has brought to the forefront -- although I have always been aware of it -- the issue of authenticity, which always triggers a somewhat annoyed reaction in me. I was wondering if I was being too sensitive, or if I have other motivations for being annoyed, or if it genuinely is a reaction which others share.

While in America, I remember a time when she went to a Chinese restaurant and told me about it (she's always been interested in international cultures and cuisines), and mentioned, "It was so good, because it was 'authentic.'"

As someone who is half-Chinese (or of Chinese descent, if the "half" is too politically charged), I asked her, "What makes you think it was authentic?"

My own previous experience with Chinese food in America had led me to deduce, that, much like all franchises attempting to make international cuisines more appealing, said cuisine had been tweaked in order to suit local palates. Which didn't mean they were any less delicious, only that they were not necessarily traditionally Chinese.

She said, "Well, the waiters were all Asian, you know."

I attempted to interrogate this a little bit -- just because the waiters were all Asian, I argued, didn't mean that they were all Chinese, for one, or all from the same part of China, or had any more knowledge of Chinese cuisine than say a white chef who had trained in China under Chinese chefs. But she remained adamant that it was more authentic because "of course they would know more about it."

I left it at that, simply because I wasn't sure myself what I was trying to get at by that point. I suppose perhaps I was annoyed that she was passing judgement on authenticity when she simply didn't have the resources to determine that it WAS authentic?  (Not that I did, either.)

So she likes to travel, and something that has always been important to her is fitting in to the local culture (I remember her being fully pleased that someone had remarked that her Russian accent held no American), and part of what encompasses that for her is not seeing any other tourists. It occurs to me that this is something that has come up on stuffwhitepeoplelike.com, but it wasn't fully unpacked, I believe. Recently she went to Jordan, and remarked that she wanted to see something off the beaten track, and that the guide delivered -- they went to see Bedouins, etc., and "only saw one other tourist the entire time."

This drove me crazy! And I'm not sure why!

Am I justified? Is it that she's treating the experience and "authenticity" as a commodity? Is it a sense of infiltration,  of "ah, I have been accepted?"

Or am I being entirely ridiculous and simply seeing a smug obnoxiousness -- which, while irritating -- has no racial or imperial underpinnings (and which says more about my selfishness and pettiness than it does anything else)?

Commenting Guidelines

This is a revision in response to reader comments on an earlier version. This version will be subject to continual revision, whenever that seems called for. 

Commenting Guidelines

Comments on this blog are moderated by its proprietor, macon d (that would be me). Differences of opinion are welcome here, but I do refuse to publish some comments. I mainly try to balance two things: a general call for white people to learn -- about racism, de facto white supremacy, and common white ways -- and the need for people of color to feel comfortable and safe in discussions of those topics.

If I don't publish a comment, sometimes I explain in a posted comment of my own [in brackets] why I rejected it (or why I redacted just part of it), and sometimes I don't. If you submit a comment and wonder why it was rejected, you're welcome to write me an email, and I'm likely (but not guaranteed) to respond.

If you are new to serious discussions of such topics as racism, de facto white supremacy, and common white tendencies, you probably have some catching up to do -- please consult the list of online resources at the bottom of this page.


1. Please do not choose the "Anonymous" function for your name. If you do, your comment will be delayed, and I will also assign your comment a name. If you then comment after that happens to you, use that new name, or else chose another and stick with that one.

2. Remember that I and others here do not "hate white people."  As a white person, I also do not "hate myself," nor am I afflicted with "white guilt." This blog is not about claiming that "white people are bad." Instead, it's about the effects of racism, especially the habits induced in white people by being socially categorized as "white." Despite what white individuals tend to think, being classified that way does matter in white people's lives; if you're white and you read around in this blog's archives with an open mind, you're likely to realize that.

3. Keep in mind the subtitle of this blog ("The ways of white folks, I mean, some white folks . . ."), and don't complain about what you see as "white-bashing" here. Very few if any of the posts here are about stuff ALL white people do. If you're white and you don't do it, then it's not about you.

4. Address the topic in the post. Comments that are off-topic or derailing do not get published here. (This does not mean, however, that comment sections do not sometimes take a productive tangent away from the topic at hand.)

5. Focus on what people say, instead of whoever you think they are. Avoid ad hominem attacks, and if you refer to another commenter here, please do your best to retype their online name correctly.

6. Don't threaten anyone with violence (even if you think you're joking).

7. Don't espouse racial essentialism. In other words, please do not claim or suggest that members of any race are inherently anything other than that which members of any other races are as well. Race is understood here as a social construction, a categorical fiction (but also, one that continues to have major real-world effects), and not a socially significant biological reality.

8. Don't complain about the ways that other commenters here communicate. Different people communicate in different ways, some of which you may object to. I do not consider it my place as a middle-class, white resident of the United States to impose here one particular set of communication standards and rules.

9. Don't bother pointing out that "other people do that too." If you're ever tempted to make a parallel of this sort, please read this post on "The Arab Trader Argument." In a similar vein, avoid discussing sexism, classism, ablism, and so on in ways that overlook or dismiss racism. These factors do of course affect and intersect with racism, but the latter, as in "stuff white people [often] do," is the focus here.

10. If you are white and you want to interact here with people of color, please be sure that you're listening respectfully to their experiences. Many white people have a tendency to shift discussions of racism to their own concerns. Since the topic here is racism, please do not derail discussions by comparing the experiences of people of color to your own, supposedly similar experiences; or by offering your own ill-informed diagnoses of what they're feeling or thinking; or by sincerely offering in response to their experiences nothing more than your own shock, regret, or sympathy, however deeply heartfelt. If you're white, please remember that people of color usually know more about racism, and about your own whiteness, then you do.

11. Along with that, please do not ask people of color here to do work for you. If you have questions for people of color here about racism, remember that Google is your friend; finding information that you can find on your own is not their job. That said, if you are a person of color or a white person, feel free to relate, analyze, and otherwise share your own experiences with white racism, as long as what you're writing is more or less related to the topic at hand.

12. If you mess up in a comment and feel you should apologize, please do, but don't make the apology all about you. White people sometimes apologize in ways that are more about saving face, and less about demonstrating that they really understand and regret the effects of their mistakes. Here's a good resource on how to apologize better than most white people do.

13. If you write to express disagreement, please avoid strawman arguments. When addressing a post or prior comment, it's better to reference its specific language and points. If you do paraphrase the words of others, you will make a better contribution, and receive better responses, if you do so accurately.

14. In general, avoid lengthy, multi-comment, thread-hijacking, and/or nitpicking discussions. These kinds of discussions tend to drive away other commenters and distract from the topic at hand.


These guidelines are subject to change; if you have suggestions for changes, please write them in a comment here. If you have questions, please send them to me via email (suggestions of any sort are always welcome that way too): unmakingmacon at gmail dot com



SUGGESTED NEWBIE RESOURCES

Racism 101 for Clueless White People, Written by a Slightly Less Clueless White Person

Racism 101

Racism = Prejudice + Power

How to Be an Anti-racist Ally

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (PDF)

teach their children to act white

Why White Students Need to Learn about Their Own Race

A Primer for Whites

I Am Racist!

Talking about the Hard Stuff (Racism 101)

generously provide examples of problematic white behavior

How to Suppress Discussions of Racism

Uprooting Colorblind Racism

How to argue like a white racist

Baby-stepping Away from Racism: A Guide for White People

White Women's Tears

White Liberal Bingo

The Glosario

How to Tell People They Sound Racist

So You Think You're an Anti-racist?

We Have Feelings Too, or The Cost Of Being A POC in Race Discussions

The Dos and Don'ts of Being a Good Ally

When Allies Fail -- Part One

When Allies Fail -- Part Two

Systemic Racism and the White Racial Frame

How I Benefit from White Privilege

label things they refuse to understand "insane"

This is a guest post by Ankhesen Mié, who reads and comments at swpd as Moi, and who writes about herself, "I’m an Ambazonian-American author who digs the unusual. I blog a lot about race, I’m allergic to seafood, and I have a weird thing for really old men."


I just had a very interesting evening at a bar with two white guys.  For this post, we'll call them Jay and Tim; Jay in his mid-20s and Tim is in his late forties (at least) -- just FYI.

Our First Topic -- Stack

So we're having drinks and talking about Andrew Joseph Stack and the apparent hesitation to brand him a terrorist (which he was, by the way).  Jay, like most people, doesn't consider Stack's actions terrorism because they weren't on the same scale as 9/11 and didn't incite as much fear.  I argued the media and FBI were deliberately trying to avoid inciting fear, and Tim and I explained to him white denial, etc. in the face of a "white threat" in order to maintain that "us-vs-them" mentality. Tim and I also had to repeatedly explain terrorism, its basic definition, and how Stack's actions fit that definition to a T.

Jay maintained that anyone who would fly a plane into a building was merely crazy and immature, and he didn't see how Stack's actions intimidated anyone.  Jay apparently hasn't been paying attention to the news, because the intimidation is most definitely there...so again, Tim and I had to explain the social and sociological factors which most people ignore in these situations (e.g., Americans regularly joke and criticize the IRS, so there's been no major outcry in its defense, even though 190 innocent people were almost murdered -- regular people just like them.  And yet folks can't seem to link our everyday sense of  IRS "humor" to the creation and maintenance of our insensitivity towards its employees' lives).

Tim and I quickly realized that all this wasn't sinking in for Jay, because Jay was hung up on the scale and aftermath of 9/11; with Stack, he couldn't see the idealogical aspect [read: religion], nor could he see the organizational/brotherhood aspect of McVeigh -- even though we explained repeatedly that a terrorist does not have to belong to an organization.

And so there sat Jay, doing that common white thing -- he stubbornly insisted that both Stack and the 19 men who took out the Twin Towers were simply "crazy and immature."

Our Second Topic -- What Caused 9/11

So I abandoned Stack and went with 9/11.  I asked Jay and Tim to honestly, seriously, tell me the root of terrorism, and why someone would resort to it.  Jay laughingly insisted on mental illness, while Tim solemnly talked about hatred, fear, and the desperate desire to change things.  Jay scoffed out how bringing down the Towers -- full of innocent civilians -- could never solve any problems.  I said the point was not to "solve" a problem -- those 19 men were not delusional.  Terrorists are not actually "crazy": they do what they do for a reason, but Jay couldn't divine it for the life of him.

So I dropped some words: social inequality (both domestic and global), exploitation, subjugation, and colonialism.

"See," Jay rolled his eyes, "this what bugs me about that -- 'imperialism,' ' colonialism' -- who cares?!"

"Bingo!" I pointed at him.  "That right there?  That is what makes America -- civilians especially -- a target for terrorists.

"Victims have long memories.  You 'don't care' because you have no clue what it's like to have nothing.  You may be poor by American standards, but you have no clue what real poverty is -- and neither do I.  You don't know what true, blatant, raw dehumanization is like.  I have African parents, I was born in Austin, TX and have spent most of my life in America.  For the brief period I lived in Cameroon, I had nannies.  I went to a private school.  My family is prominent in our home province.  So while I too could never see myself flying a plane into a building, I could see why my parents or grandparents -- who were born and raised under colonial rule -- would.

"My father sat me down when I was young to explain how such life was for an African child.  He went to a Christian, British-run boarding school, and didn't see his kin for months at a time.  When there, he could not go by his African name; he had to use his English one.  He couldn't speak his native dialect even if some of his classmates were members of the same tribe.  He could not practice any ancestral beliefs, but Catholicism instead.  And most people in America don't know this, but it was -- for a very long time -- colonial educational policy to teach African children that their ancestors who built the pyramids, temples, kingdoms, and palaces whose ruins still stand, and who featured heavily in the recited histories of griots and scholars (yes, Africans have always had their own historians) -- the children were taught these ancestors were white, and that they [the children] had neither history nor legacy."

Now mind you, Jay's face was red through all this; he was not speaking, and he was avoiding eye contact as though his life depended on it.  So I just went on about how colonialism and chattel slavery will never be practiced against Africans again, and not because the Western world has become so evolved, but because Africans will die before they allow it to happen.  Same thing here: if white America decided to displace Native Americans from their reservations right now, Native Americans would not just sit back and let it happen.  What happened before will never be allowed to happen the same way again in this world.

Tim added how America has not evolved; it's young, and doesn't have the extensive the historical lengths of other nations.  It's going through its own attempts at imperialism right now, though it will neither recognize nor admit to it.  I then added that when the conflict between colonialists and Native Americans first became dead serious, the colonialists were no doubt being told, "This is not your country.  These are not your things.  Either deal with us like civilized people or go back to wherever you came from."

"Sound familiar?"  I asked Jay. "No?  Here's another hint."

I explained that Middle East Asians, when talking about their history of mistreatment by Westerners, don't start their story in the last 20-50 years.  They start it with the Crusades.  Since the time of the Crusades, the Mid East has endured cyclical invasions  --but Americans don't know that.  And like most countries today, the modern Middle East has spent years wrangling with arrogant American politicians and "diplomats" who basically show up to dictate how things will be done (even Western European politicians complain of this type of treatment).  The conflict we are witnessing now is no different from America's conflict from centuries ago: the Mid East will not back down.  The war drags on unsuccessfully because our previous administration erroneously assumed these broke, "backward", brown people could be brought to heel, as brown people have been before -- no.  They will die before they let that happen.  Listen to how they react to American presence on their soil: "This is not your country.  These are not your things.  Either deal with us like civilized people, or go back to wherever you came from" -- does this sound familiar now?

Jay could still not see why Arabs would target American civilians.  I explained it's because American civilians have not been listening for decades.  Oh, they know their government does some "exploiting" here and there (Jay actually said things along this line) but they don't know the gory details.

Americans don't understand how it feels to have heavily armed foreigners show up and order them around with slurs and threats.  They don't care to know.  Genocide was going on Rwanda long before America got involved.  Why?  Americans didn't care (once again; Americans have forgotten their initial negligence, but I can assure you Rwandans have not).  Americans put a dim-witted butcher in office and left him there for eight years to the detriment of themselves and the extreme detriment of others, but have already forgotten the "put him there" part and talk as though he just "became" President out of nowhere.  Americans knew he was being a bully to others, but didn't stop him.  He killed their children, disfigured some others, and massacred hundreds of thousands of humans on the other side of the world, and Americans paid him a fat salary all the while.  Americans don't know Arabic history, don't understand or respect Islam, don't pay attention to their crimes against the Middle East, feel entitled to the rewards they reap from beneath Eastern soil, don't care if their president is committing atrocities in their name...and yet Americans have the gall to wonder why 19 Arab men would go directly after them.

Jay, who'd become a lot less humorous and animated, still insisted on the "insanity" defense, causing Tim to shake his head at him.  Tim then used an example I hadn't thought of -- Appalachia itself.  All three of us have spent the bulk of our lives in Appalachia, and Jay is perhaps the most "Appalachian" of us three: he was born here, he's unable to stay away from it for too long, is currently working for the state researching and writing grants to help provide homes and jobs for the homeless population, and like most Appalachians, Jay refuses to leave in the foreseeable future.

Our Third Topic -- Appalachia

FYI, most Americans can't point out West Virginia on a map (don't ask me what they put down as the 50th state whenever they came up one state short in elementary school geography).  West Virginia, in case you're wondering, is the beating heart of Appalachia to some folks.  To "outsiders" who have some knowledge of its existence, West Virginia like a "Third World Country," populated solely by illiterate hicks who are often the stuff of horror films and the butt of incest jokes.  Most Americans don't know WV's history, nor why, how, or even that it separated from Virginia in the first place (it was an anti-slavery state, just so you know).

Appalachians have been poor and neglected for generations -- there has never been a "Golden Age" in this region.  Like Africa and the Mid East, WV is, ironically, brimming with natural resources: vast forests, huge coal mines, abundant natural gas, natural springs, and long rivers.  For generations, outside companies have come in, taken what they've wanted, and then moved on, leaving massive poverty in their wake.  Out of all Appalachians, West Virginians in particular have come to loathe "outsiders" (and in Southern WV, where poverty is severe, political officials and state employees are almost never greeted pleasantly).  And while their distrust continues to hinder their economy and education, it has kept their distinctive identity -- and historical memories -- intact.

'Cause again, kids, victims have long memories.

And...Disappointment

Our talk was finally starting to sink in a little for Jay, and I wasn't shocked that it took the only other white guy in the talk to finally break through to him (however, I was refreshed to see an older white guy schooling a younger one about the need to see things from the "Other Side."  I was also elated when Tim brought up John Brown and how his raid was -- and is still sometimes -- considered an act of terrorism).

Now, Tim and I had been vibing quite well this whole time, smoothly backing each other up with insights and historical tidbits, much to Jay's visible discomfort.  It was late, and the bar was getting too loud for us to keep talking, so I began to say my goodbyes.  Tim and I cheerfully thanked each other for the conversation, but Jay was deeply concerned I might be angry with him.  Needless to say, his worry baffled Tim and me, considering how I had not expressed any anger at all.  Why would I?  Tim demonstrated exemplary supportiveness, global historical knowledge, and astounding insight; our intertwining dialogue had been excellent...and all Jay had to say was he feared I may never speak to him again??!?

Jay uncomfortably insisted he still "just couldn't understand" how anyone would think terrorism was an answer, and that they'd have to be insane to actually fly a plane into a building.  Sighing and giving up, I simply assured him I wasn't angry in the least, but insisted on heading out (I figured Jay might talk to Tim more comfortably if I was absent).  I accepted Jay's hug, and let him walk me to my car.

Hope he and Tim are having a good talk.

look forward to a race-free future, instead of focusing on racism today

 

(the book)

I've been noticing another common white tendency lately. In fact, I've been noticing it so often that I feel compelled to write it down, so I can better see and deal with it.

How do you deal with this one when you hear it?

This common white tendency is to look forward to a supposedly race-free future, instead of focusing on the pervasive racism of today.

I was reminded of this tendency this morning, when I followed a link to "tv tropes." I decided to peruse this site's section on "Race Tropes," but then I got pulled up short by an introductory paragraph:

Ah, race. As much as the endlessly-optimistic sorts like to believe that race is no longer a discriminatory factor any more than eye color is, the fact remains that fiction is not quite "color-blind" yet. We're getting there (slowly but surely), and media today is far more racism-sensitive than in the days of the Ethnic Scrappy, but reflexive stereotypes still linger like a bad fart in a slow elevator.

Hmmm, I thought. Just who's being "endlessly optimistic" here? I mean, if we're slowly but surely approaching a color-blind future, then why bother contributing toward that effort? If it's already and "surely" happening, then I guess us white folks can just relax, right? The future's looking good, thanks to, um, someone's efforts. Or, thanks to something or other. . . but anyway, whew! The job of eradicating racism isn't up to me, because it's already happening.

I think the people at tv tropes do good work in this section of their site, by exposing pervasive and influential modes of media-generated racism. However, any anti-racism efforts that the site's writers might be making seem undercut by that introductory statement, which almost amounts to a disclaimer. It's as if they're saying they don't want to be labeled "race hustlers," the kind of people who go around claiming racism is a big deal, rudely inflicting their concerns on other people like, you know, a "bad fart in a slow elevator." Who needs that, right? Especially when racism is already (somehow) getting better on its own. In fact, if anyone is a "racist" anymore it's them. [/sarcasm]

I obviously do think know that racism is still a big deal, and that it's not going away anytime soon. Which is why, for one thing, I make it a point to discuss racial issues with friends and co-workers. This common white tendency -- to look towards a rosy future, when racism will have finally withered away, as if it just got old and died a natural, inevitable death -- has come up in conversation twice this past week, and probably six, seven or more times in the past couple of months. We'll be talking about, say, John Mayer's loose lips, or those of Chris Matthews, or one time, the way that sportscasters still talk differently sometimes about players of different races.

I don't consider it useful or constructive to discuss racism in merely individual terms -- to label, that is, this or that individual as a "racist." If the person I'm talking to is willing (especially if it's a white person), I always try to work outward from whatever egregious example of racism is at hand. I try to talk about "racism," instead of "racists"; I try to discern whether a common white tendency is at hand; and then, usually later, I also try to see how that tendency resides within myself.

So as I said, lately I've noticed that when I move outward in a conversation like that -- from some supposed "racist" to the racist tendency that he or she displayed or enacted -- the white person or persons I'm talking to often become restless. They sometimes don't want to focus along with me in my effort to generalize the incident into a common white tendency. What they sometimes then say is, I think, another common white tendency itself.

"Okay, but don't you think this is all getting better?" one of my friends recently more or less said. "I mean, what is that they say about 2050 or so, that whites are going to be a minority, right? I mean, you talk about how white power is still with us, and I agree, but isn't it just, kind of, withering away on its own?"

Another example occurred when I was talking to a different white friend, a high school teacher, about whether "terrorism" is a useful term for describing the suicidal assault this week of an IRS office by John Stack. As I made the more general point that white people rarely label other white criminals "terrorists," and that they're much quicker to do that with non-white criminals, this person listened with a deeper and deeper frown, and then she said,

"Well yeah, I can see the racist double standard there. But really, that's going to get better, I think. People aren't going to always be fooled that way. I mean, look, Obama got elected, right? That's a pretty big deal! Because, I was talking to some students about his election, and they were mostly white, but also some of them weren't white. And I was thinking they'd be excited that a black man was finally elected president. But you know what their response was?"

"Um, not as excited as you?"

"Exactly! They were all like, 'meh.' And I think that's hopeful. Because kids aren't seeing race as much anymore, and they're the next generation."

This kind of white talk seems to be happening more than before. I suppose Obama's election has contributed to it. I wonder if it's also a kind of exhaustion, or maybe boredom, that a lot of white people feel with the issue of racism. Talking about that, letting alone working against it is so, like, 1990s. Or even, 1960s.

Are you also encountering this common white tendency? If so, how do you respond?

I think it's a sort of white tactic, and until I thought about it, I found it deflating -- it's a form of derailment. In response, I've now taken to simply asking people why they do that:

"Why did you go there? The future, I mean, when we were talking about right now. I hear that a lot, actually, from white people. What was it that made you go there, instead of staying right here?"

Sometimes this response leads to a useful discussion, and sometimes people look at me like I'm some sort of time-traveling alien. Like I've traveled here from the past, and definitely not from the future.

suddenly show tact when discussing white people who commit possible acts of terrorism

 This is a guest post by Big Man, who blogs at Raving Black Lunatic.


Real quick y'all.

I'm watching the coverage of this plane crash in Austin. The one where a dude flew a plane into the IRS building after burning his house.

And everybody is falling all over themselves not to call this cat a "terrorist."

It's "possible terrorist-related activity" but it's not terrorism and he's not a terrorist. What the hell?

How can you fly a plane into a building out of spite, and have folks call it "suicide by plane?" That's like calling it "suicide by portable chest bomb."

Why are media folks wondering if the FBI needs to be involved since it's a local crime? Really son? Trying to kill federal employees on federal property is just a "local problem" now?

I bet if he had a Muslim surname it would be terrorism. Yep, wouldn't be no question, just like the first thing you heard after the Fort Hood shooting was about how dude should be called a terrorist. But this white dude is heated at the federal government and attacks that same government by targeting innocents and he's not a terrorist?

Oh, hell naw. Just no. Stop it you hypocritical bastards. Just stop.

struggle to find their place in social justice efforts

This is a guest post by IzumiBayani, who blogs at Musings of a 20-some Year Old Multiracial Kid. He describes himself as "100% Japanese, 100% white, 25% deaf, oppressor and oppressed."


This blog does a pretty good job of opening discussions about "the ways of white folks, i mean, some white folks," basically by talking about stupid shit (fairly well-intentioned or not) that white people do in everyday life. That sort of discussion is necessary, but I believe that "some white folks" deserve particular consideration -- those straight, white males who participate in social justice efforts.

I’d like to make one thing very clear to these white people: you should not use swpd and other social justice spaces as a source of self-validation. If you want to participate here, ask yourself why you want to be in a space that should really serve people of color (PoC) and some white women (WW). This is especially not a space to relate your experiences and sob stories about being ignored in these spaces.

I have a very good friend, and for the sake of this post, I'll name him Ecirb. He’s in his upper-thirties, and he self-identifies as a white heterosexual male. How he grew up is important to who he is and his current situation, but that doesn't matter in the context of this discussion because he looks like a white guy. Ecirb is an Ethnic Studies Major and I am glad to say that he’s a social justice advocate (not that I'm the end-all to determining who is and isn't an advocate).

He and I talk about many things, but recently our discussion has been centered on the perception of white people in general social justice spaces. Just a warning, this is a multi-layered, complex situation to deconstruct, but I am going to try. In addition, I'm not saying that Ecirb's situation applies to all white hetero males in social justice, but I think there are very important lessons to be drawn from his experience.

Here’s a small sampling of some of his experiences, as best as I can recall them, and since Ecrib claims that these are “facts,” I will try to be as objective as possible. These experiences should be helpful in clarifying the proper role of white hetero men in social justice efforts:

• Ecrib and I use a lobby area for Ethnic Studies students. With a couch and some public computers, it’s a wonderful space to congregate and talk about social justice issues and our classes. Ecirb tells me that when he is alone with one of his friends (in this case it happens to be a woman of color), she is open and very interested in what he has to say. But when other's walk in, she becomes aloof, almost as if she doesn't know him.

• One time, he walks into the room with a friend of his who appears to be a black hetero male, and the room suddenly goes quiet. Ecrib's friend points to him and says, "He's cool."

• Ecrib feels ignored in class, and when he’s not, most of his comments are met with resistance or quick dismissal.

• He’s very up-front with his opinions. If you’re being a bigot, he’ll say so to your face, because that's how he deals with it.

There is one thing that I make clear to Ecrib every time he complains about these things. No matter who he is, the fact that he appears to be a white male makes it difficult for him to operate in a social justice environment. I constantly tell him that his phenotype conjures up for most PoC an entire lifetime of negative experiences, and that is something he cannot help and must overcome. I think he gets that, but it’s also easy for him to forget the privilege he has to walk around and not have to worry about how his physical appearance itself is enough to incite painful experiences.

The consequence is that he must prove himself. He has to work harder to be taken as legit, and to make friends in this department. Now, Ecrib has no issue with the fact that he has to work harder, and neither do I. This is the consequence of centuries of oppression: that excellent people such as Ecirb must work hard to become basic friends with excellent people such as the PoC in our Ethnic Studies Department.

However, a problem I see is that some PoC and some WW don’t give him a chance to prove himself. I understand that it's safer to assume the worst with white people. It's a safety mechanism, and I do it too. But to shut out people like Ecirb, to suppress/ignore what he has to say because of who he is, is detrimental to everyone.

In fact, not giving Ecrib a chance goes against what we’re fighting for. Ending the isms will take every individual, and it’s counter-productive and ignorant to exclude anyone on the basis of what they look like. Take the hint people! He's majoring in Ethnic Studies in his late 30's. Maybe he knows more about bigotry then you do just from how much longer he's been alive? Maybe so, maybe not, but it’s difficult for me to ignore the wisdom of age.

This situation requires a careful balancing by everyone. It took me a long time to realize that I have to give white people a chance to prove themselves, and white people also have to understand that it’s an uphill battle to prove themselves. And just like some white people aren't worth talking to because they're so stupid and racist, some PoC and WW aren’t worth talking to either. You do not have to prove yourself to these people because there is nothing you could say or do to change their mind.

I don't tell Ecrib this often enough, but he needs to stay humble. No one is asking him to lead us out to the promise land. In fact, he can’t be a dominant leader in a social justice movement because of his identity. This space is for PoC and to some extent WW. He can support, but he can't lead. That invokes the White Savior Complex. White male arrogance can easily ruin his credibility and get him thrown off the boat.

In addition, people like Ecrib need to realize that their real work isn't with a community of PoC; their responsibility is among white people, men, and straight people. He has the advantage in those spaces, so that’s where his privilege of assumed credibility can be used to his/our advantage. These are spaces where he can effectively be a leader.

There is much work to be done by both groups. The social justice movement needs to get its shit together just as much as white people do. We all have room to learn and grow.

Again, I want to emphasize that even though I’m writing about people like Ecrib on swpd, and even though this conversation needs to include everyone involved, this is not a space for white people to tell PoC that they need to be more accepting of white people. A discussion of how dominant identities can better fit into the space of social justice would be more pertinent.

At the same time, what can we as PoC’s and women do to balance staying safe and giving dominant identities a chance?