(Continuing the discussion – promoted by buhdydharma )
Many years ago I was on a city committee whose purpose was to give advice to the Mayor about choosing the next police chief. The committee included a cross section of people based on profession, class and race. At one point, an African American man made a statement that African American men were the most oppressed group in this country. While I could understand the oppression he was speaking to, his point offended me on two levels. First of all, there were no Native Americans in the room and I think they could have made a pretty good case that genocide (combined with all of the other atrocities like boarding schools for children) and invisibility are pretty major forms of oppression. And secondly, I think it creates nothing but division amongst the marginalized in this country to create “degress of oppression.” Its awful no matter how, when or who it happens to.
But the point of me telling that story is that, as a white woman, I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think I had the right to speak. In other words, once a person of color has spoken on an issue, my job as a white person was to listen and accept their point of view. And I still believe there is a certain amount of truth in that.
But the incident gnawed at me for a long time. Finally, I brought the subject up with a very wise man who was teaching me about undoing racism. I told him the story and asked for his imput. His response surprised me and has stuck with me as a very powerful statement for years. He said that when I was settled and strong in my own cultural identity, I would be able to challenge anyone anytime, no matter the color of their skin. That’s NOT what I expected to hear from him.
What I eventually learned from this experience is that, as white people, we take our “culture” as the default culture. And in doing so, we never examine it, but tend to project it as the one and only way to be. Once we step back and notice that our culture is just that, a culture, and begin to notice it and claim it, we are freed to SEE other cultures for what they are and can interact in a meaningful way cross-culturally.
Another thing I was learning at about the same time was that, as we initially began the process of diversifying our staff at work, we fell into the deadly trap of tokenism. This happened when we would have one black person and no matter what the issue about race was, their word was the one, only and final word. This is why people of color react so negatively to tokenism. It places a tremendous burden on that one individual to speak for a whole race of people. And as white people, we get a pretty narrow view of what the racial landscape really looks like, only furthering our potential for stereotypes. I remember thinking that we had really arrived when there were enough African Americans on staff that they got into some pretty nasty disagreements about racism.
All of that is well and good, but it creates a whole new set of challenges in our attempts at undoing racism. I remember asking a friend of mine who is Native American and has done alot of research and training in the area of racism if I needed to accept any charge of racism from a person of color unchallenged. Because you see, at this point I was beginning to see that this whole arena is full of complexity and doesn’t lend itself to oversimplified “right and wrong” kinds of thinking. Her response to my question was more what I expected. She counseled me to be open – listen – and try my best to learn. But in the end, it would always be a struggle.
So yes, there have been times I have rejected claims of racism, but very rarely and only with great seriousness and thought. Like for instance, the time a director of another youth-serving nonprofit told me, after our first conversation of only a few minutes, that he didn’t trust the agency I’m the director of to adequately serve Latino youth because we are a “white-run” organization. From others in his community, I learned that this was part of his attempt to organize the community to fund his organiation instead of ours for the work we do (and do quite successfully if I might say so). Eventually, the chair of his board apologized to me and a few months later he was without a job.
I do take charges of racism extremely seriously. This journey to understand what is happening in me, in my community, and in this country with respect to racism has been one of the most challenging and rewarding journeys I’ve ever taken. But it is not, and never will be simple and clear-cut. The only hope we have is to open our eyes and ears and talk…A LOT.
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that one good thing that might come out of all the recent fireworks is a deeper conversation about racism. This is just my attempt to put some of my thoughts and experiences out there. I’d love to talk more.
Excellent piece of reflective writing. And of course the situation is even more complex because we have to deal not only with ourselves and other people, and not only with social expectations and blind spots, but also with the weight of a pretty ugly history on all our shoulders. It infects the present, but nothing is more deadly than pretending it doesn’t exist.
But I completely disagree with this diary and its assumptions.
And i especially hate the use of the phrase “tokenism,” PARTICULARLY in the contexts you describe.
I find much of the underlying thought in this essay to be subliminally racist.
For example, you write:
What is supposed to be meant by this? How did you fallinto the “trap of tokenism” when trying to “diversify your staff?” What is your meaning here? Did you actively seek out candidates of color? Is that what you mean? How exactly did you “diversify your staff?” What was its representation prior to the “tokenism?” What was it after?
Another thing you write:
What part was not simple and clearcut? Surely the EXISTENCE of racism was “simple and clearcut” I hope? Or is it your view that “racism” is fast becoming “a thing of the past?”
You seem to imply that there is too much vigilance against racism and that indeed there is a strong argument against taking action to fight it and to ameliorate its historic effects.
I do not know exactly, but I must say I find this essay to be EXTREMELY troubling.
… with some of the writing in this essay.
You speak of wondering how to react to the charge of racism.
I very much agreed with the first piece of advice you speak of, but for me the bottom line is what we were speaking about earlier in Armando’s diary.
You have said you think in light of what happened we should have a deeper conversation about this. And I agree, and I also think that episode is something real and tangible to bring into the conversation.
You saw my own stumbling and sliding when I ended up having to respond twice to you.
I think one of the most difficult things in confronting racism, whether someone else’s, our own, or someone confronting us and saying we are racist, is our own predilictions.
In my case, I find your work awesome on this subject so I was dishonest at first so you’d “approve” of me. It was my own ego, my own prediliction of what makes my ego feel good, my comfort zone.
In your case, my theory (and that’s all it is) is that seeing as you told me you have a difficult time with confrontation, being “thin skinned,” and receiving harsh language with a lot of confrontational challenge, perhaps you were not at first able to get past your own prediliction, your own comfort zone, to see that there was a racist charge and that should have taken priority and thus would have illuminated and explained, one way or the other, where this anger and confrontation was coming from.
Just as I didn’t at first take the right priority because of my comfort zone.
I hope this makes sense.
Because what really gets hurt in ourselves when someone calls us a racist? I think that is a very important question.
Thanks.
Pretty clear cut to me just take a look.. As a white woman I’ve watched the bar lower and lower over the last decade as it has for many race sex what ever. My closest personal reference to racism is through being a woman which has been throughly stomped to the ground with assumptions of PC and platitudes plus co-opting. Where are we going when we dick around with the definitions of Noblise Oblige and such? I too find this disturbing.
as far as i know, there are only three categories: caucasian, negroid, and mongoloid. so it’s racism in a classic sense and then it gets ethnic because Hispanics belong to the same race as Brits, and so do people of color from India. then there’s sex, age, and whatever other isms…
and then it serves to look inward and be honest, as you have done NLinStPaul.
for me, it’s the unease i sense off another and they sense from me. sometimes when an African American walks towards me, i sense we are both not sure how to “look” at each other. i want to smile and in the smile say, “hey, i’m with you, another human being” but i don’t know how to do it. but there is some barrier, something awkward, an unease.
i feel white in those moments. it’s something i never think about, except in those moments.
then, one day, i met a parking garage attendent. he was from Nigeria. a black black man. but right off the bat, i never felt the unease with him. i suspect because he didn’t see himself as black when he saw me… he was just another fellow human being. he never saw himself, as i imagine it, as less than some other kind of person. he was himself and he let me be myself. we could just easily look each other in the eyes. and we talked for 15 or 20 minutes and i’ll never forget him. or what he helped me to understand.
the next thing i learned was from toni morrison’s “beloved.” what it must have been like to be dehumanized and milked, for fun, like a cow. it took me a few hours to get past that passage and the idea of it. and it gave me perspective on how this feeling of being “not as good” has made it hard for me and my black brothers and sisters to find ease in each other’s company.
but there is something larger. the very real historical perspective. 1865 is only 142 years or seven generations from slavery. think about that for one minute. and what has happened in those years? think 1965 and civil rights… and now, it’s only 42 years later. these were people held as slaves, not allowed to speak their native language or give their children native names. they lost their history. by 1865, many didn’t know where in africa they came from. they had a cultural and ethnic and racial void.
at least this is my perception.
i think my relationship with my black brothers and sisters is the most instructive, for me, in understanding my racism. my awkwardness. sometimes my fear. or when i click past BET, and then ask myself “why”
the hope i have is from those times that i’ve become just a human being to another human being, and how easily all those “race” markers became invisible.
and NL, the advice that man gave you was exactly correct. respect means being honest with others. be who you are and be honest. that is being color or ethnic or sex blind. don’t change who you are and when you give yourself and it’s sincere, then you do something wonderful. and maybe those with whom you are interacting will absorb the beauty of being self-possessed.
i think your essay is beautifully written and helped me to explain my own feelings. thanks.
blogger just ate a long comment! oh well, maybe i’ll try again.
After reading Armando’s article “What Barack Obama Needs To Learn From Richard Hofstadter, Abraham Lincoln and FDR” I got into a conversation with my husband about our experience in the little town/county in northwest Missouri that still had school districts divided by Civil War allegiances.
One story: I interviewed a white woman about her father who had recently died. She’d moved away from the area and held no love for the place. After she found out I was new to the place (seemingly, at the time, out-of-the-blue), she told me a story that had taken place in the 1930’s. A black man had been accused of raping and murdering a white woman (yes, stereotypical). A mob of white men formed, chased the man, caught him, tied him to the school house roof and then set the school on fire. He died.
Now, I’d noticed the place was lacking in people of color, but after that story, I realized that this “quaint little Mayberry” held dangerous seeds of violence. (And indeed it did, as we later learned, to anyone who was in the slighted bit “different” than the norm. Norm being white, Christian, conservative. But that’s another set of stories.)
After the woman told me the story, the very few times I saw a person of color walking down the street I had the urge to jump out of the car and tell them to run, get out of Dodge, now.
Despite my life experiences, was I naive about race in that context in that place? Oh my god, yes.
I could get all new agey here and talk about “the other” in ourselves, but we already know about that. We are defined, internally and externally, by our race, gender, religious or non-religious, political and etc. experiences. Once we stop moving those borders around, like they did in that county, I think we’re stay stuck. I’d rather expand. I don’t know how to explain to others to expand, only that I think it is a valuable part of learning to live.
I think you are quite brave, both in your professional life and blog life. Thank you for bringing this diary “to the table.”
Gotta run, will be back later. Keep on keeping on! @:-)
I just want to say thanks for providing a space to continue to talk about this in a less charged atmosphere. I appreciate it.
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that I’ve learned from this essay is that my brain synapses don’t work as well when I’m writing alone, but seem to kick into gear more effectively when pushed in dialogue. So I want to thank all of you that engaged in that with me.
I’ll try to be more clear in my initial writing, but if you ever have problems with what I’ve said, please challenge me (I’d prefer more that “fuck off”) and hopefully the synapses will pop into shape.
All you need to do is GET OVER YOUR FRIGGIN HANGUPS
Then all people are the same.
2 cents from the left quarter.
…I’m guessing amando, pico, and NPK have moved on…and will miss this…but it was all rather thought provoking. I missed the main discussion, so forgive me if this is a little off topic…
First, what I liked about this diary, very much, and why I hit rec. I think moral judgements come most effectively from authenticity and integrity. People want to be able to say “oh I asked a black person and they said” or “I asked my gay friend and he said” or “I asked a woman”…and not only is that one person made an absurd exemplar of a class of people, to everyone’s detriment, but the speaker reveals themselves to have the moral insight of a turnip. If something is wrong, a person should be able to be informed by — and enormously educated by — the perceptions of people from different levels of priviledge and from different cultural frames. But then, always, one has to act from what one sees as true. I loved the desciption of tokenism in that regard.
Secondus, what I thought you missed — and I’d put this much more lightly than other commenters — was the fact that the worst acts of prejudice are almost always committed on the margins of people’s perception, at the level they don’t even acknowledge to themselves. One can have great integrity and act from what one sees to be true and still miss the effects of both history and assumption. Can be to all intents and purposes, to members of one’s group, the soul of reason and tact, but act toward people who are different like a third grader. In fact, I’d guess that happens a _lot_.
I also thought it isn’t merely a matter of owning one’s culture, but understanding one’s culture in context. There is an aspect of standing my own ground in terms of my moral perceptions which comes from acknowledging I’m a secular white american. But much of that information — including the knowledge of how partial that information is — has come from living in places where people were not secular, white or american. A lot of it comes from being an out transsexual woman. I guess I felt the missing peices on a personal level were introspection and awareness of how completely people are wired to lie to themselves and conform. The people who are standing on firm ground — to my own view — are those who are willing and able to look at the stories they tell themselves, and the ways in which we prop up each other’s cruelty and bullshit. That seems fairly rare to me…