Ending anti-racism?

J-truly is not going to get into this right now, but all should go read this post by Guerrilla Mama (h/t Quin on PunkAssBlog h/t Field Negro h/t Daktari II) on how she's decided she's not teaching anti-racism workshops any more. Her basic point(s) seem to be that, from her point of view, "anti-racism" education isn't achieving its goals, because those who seek to take it are either seeking to avoid a pending racial lawsuit or to build radical/racial cred without changing, acknowledging, or challenging white privilege. That many in her experience learn the language of anti-racism and use the language more towards being hip than towards changing their way of being -- understandable because of how hard it is to challenge yourself on a deep level, but completely antithetical towards the actual content and message of anti-racism. The commenters are fantastic and explore a lot of expansions, variations, and critiques on her point, with a discussion of how/whether normative white culture encourages/allows for a separation of words and deeds, intent and action, such that it matters more that you say your consciousness is changed or raised to understand racial issues than whether or not you change your behavior and how you conduct yourself day-to-day to reflect such a thing. And beyond that, how, in the G-Mama's mind, those who do earnestly wish to learn and challenge have such a wealth of material written about race, racism, privilege, anti-racism, etc. that a workshop is not just unnecessary but a crutch to avoid doing the hard work it does and will require to make changes to oneself and the world, and how all that material anyway is secondary to what someone on there calls radical honesty, and the ability to be aware of and try to address other people's perspectives. The point is, she says, everyone gets it wrong, but so many (white) people with no "training" achieve a more or less radical understanding by learning and only making new mistakes. When you find out a certain term or tone or approach is alienating or preserving systematic racism, you try a new term, tone, or approach, and also, you talk to those affected, learning from them and with them, with an openness and desire for understanding and change that is an important pre-condition for effectively learning what she might teach in anti-racism, but is a prereq that is (apparently) only rarely met in her experiences for such training.

So apparently, I actually am going to comment on this.

My quick dois centavos is that during my brief time at a Fortune 500 company making consumer products, we had Diversity Training, and its been one of the single most useful things I've experienced. Prime among the important lessons is something referred to obliquely, and in a different manner, on G-Mama's comment board: The Golden Rule is wrong. That is, don't treat others as you want to be treated, because that assumes everyone is like you, and they aren't -- whether they share your race, gender, religion, culture, or not. (But it especially may be true if they don't.) Treat others, get this, as THEY want to be treated. And how do you know how that is? Only through dialogue, by asking and by understanding and learning, through trial and error, will you know how that is -- but it is more likely to work and generate a good and healthy relationship than assuming they want to be treated as you do. (I've found this IN.VAL.U.ABLE. in personal relationships.)

Speaking of healthy relationships, G-Mama has a rather good post highlighting and praising this excellent entry on IllDoctrine, the Hip-Hop video blog (which I believe in turn I found a while back via EpicFu, meant to start following, and never did). I have no idea who this "Aster Roth" kid is, but J Smooth's smoothly produced vlog is a fantastic commentary (Aster Roth apparently played at Rutgers and joked "ironically" that he was hanging with "nappy headed hos", apparently not with malice but as a joke that, um, didn't work.) J Smooth:

[This] illustrates where a lot of us are at right now with race in america. We're in a new place right now. We're not in The Promised Land, but we're a few steps further down that road than we've ever been before. And as we make progress, we get more comfortable. And as we get more comfortable some of us get a little... extra comfortable. We start acting as if coming closer together means not having to care how our words affect each other. We start assuming we can make any kinda joke or use any kind of epithet without any kind of second thought because now that we've made all this progress - everyone's always gonna know we don't mean it like that.

Right?

Nooooooooo! That is not how this thing is gonna work!

...In any healthy relationship, the closer you get, the more you care about how you affect each other...and yet, somehow, in our racial interactions, we tend to forget that. And start thinking coming closer together means we can care less about how we affect each other.

See the whole thing here.

J Smooth couldn't be more right about relationships, racial or otherwise. Something we've said in my family is that being close to someone doesn't mean you get to treat them however you want because they already know that you love them; it means taking *extra* care to treat them right. It does mean that they will see you at your best and worst, and sometimes, it's all you can do to behave decently, or even sub-decently. But all the more because those times are going to happen, whenever you can, you should put out the extra effort, not the lower or below-average one. You appreciate them because you love them, you don't love them so you can depreciate them. J-Smooth:

The whole process of getting closer is becoming more aware of [the] constantly evolving boundaries [in the relationship], and getting better at respecting them... In any healthy relationship, the closer you get the more you care about how you affect each other... somehow in our racial interactions we tend to forget that, and tend to think that as we get closer to together, we can care LESS about each other's boundaries... 'Respecting each other's humanity is such a PAIN in the ASS, do we really have to do this FOREVER? Can't you guys just lighten up so I don't have to respect you anymore? Isn't the whole process of Coming Together As One so that I don't have to care what YOU think?

Anyway. J Smooth's points are good ones, and echoes something I posted before by Ta-Nehisi Coates:

"I never thought the fact that there was a magazine called Heeb gave me the right to address my Jewish buddies as such. More to the point--I never wanted to. ...What's the big beef? ...I don't get white people who have a hard time with this--you call your mother "Mom," I call her Ms. Phillips--same deal here. Nigger means one thing when used amongst a group of people with similar experiences, and something else when used by people outside of that experience.

So yeah. Go read, learn, see this good shit that I found by going down the rabbit whole of following the damn links on people's damn blogs. (How DARE they be so good, make me spend all this time reading them? =p

Links:
D-Constructing-D (General goodness)

Quin on PunkAssBlog (wherein the author, a white male, decides he needs to reconsider and start to take seriously the issue of "white male privilege", including the privilege he previously exercised of avoiding all discussions of gender or race)

Field Negro

Guerrilla Mama Medicine

Ill Doctrine

New Rule/Explanation for the use of the word "Nigger"

In case I haven't discussed it before, the J Continuum's feeling on the use of the word "nigger" is that it is clearly unacceptable and undesirable for it to be used as an epithet, but that it is also marginally insane and the worst kind political correctness to believe that one can't use the word when, you know, referring to the word. While this might be overextending an analogy, it to me is in the same genre if different order of magnitude as equating mentioning the word "Holocaust" and actually conducting a systematized killing of Jews. Don't call someone a nigger; but when we adults are talking about it, seriously, can we stop saying "The N word"?

Anyway, there has been in recent years (or decades, rather) a sort of push-back on, "How come blacks can use it talk about each other but it's verboten for everyone else?" Leaving aside the fact that I don't think blacks should use it to refer to each other endearingly as a general rule (this being my least favorite part about the mostly-otherwise-brilliant animated version of The Boondocks) it nonetheless is different when "we" use it rather than white people or others using it pejoratively. On Feministe recently, this post by J-fave PhysioProf briefly discusses this point in a pretty enlightened way, though two posts, here, and here make the excellent points. The first, from "Holly", ends with

Of course, I don’t think it’s that most people don’t get it. At this point they do — they just don’t like black folks being allowed to do something that they can’t.

Lauren's, the latter, references this excellent post by Ta-Nehisi Coates (I have no idea who this nigger* is), in which he says

never thought that because Toby Keith made a record called White Trash With Money, that somehow gave me the right to address random white people in the fashion. I never thought the fact that there was a magazine called Heeb gave me the right to address my Jewish buddies as such. More to the point--I never wanted to. So this is what I don't understand--What's the big beef? Why is that in "Blackworld" the normal laws of human interaction somehow don't apply? I don't get white people who have a hard time with this--you call your mother "Mom," I call her Ms. Phillips--same deal here. Nigger means one thing when used amongst a group of people with similar experiences, and something else when used by people outside of that experience. Nigger when used by black people, is a lovely, lovely thing. I will believe that till the end of my days. It can be beautifully ominous ("Nigger, what?") and just plain beautiful ("Ta-Nehisi, that's my nigger").

Just my $0.02 -- though I don't quite believe the use of the word nigger is a "lovely, lovely thing." It can be said to be amusing versatile at times, like the word "Fuck," though. (I know that's a lame conclusion, but I have work to be doing.)


*I do also, incidentally, think using the words "nigger" or "nigga" ironically or in jest is fine between two people who understand each other. For example, my friends often wonder if they can even say it in front of me in that way, even though we say all sorts of terrible things about other people and groups, expressly because we know each other well enough to understand it's not meant. On the other hand, it does seem to be a still much-charged word in my circles; I can't help but to feel that this is in no small part due to the fact that I am perhaps the only close black friend of many of my friends, or at least, one of the few. I can understand here extra hesitation, and identify with it (I don't usually use the word even in jest around my white friends, or indeed, around anyone usually). What I think is the case is that the de facto segregation that has led to many of my fellow suburban-raised friends having only one or a few black friends puts too fine a point on the wages of US' history to make joking about something like that comfortable. If you're curious as to why/how it may be different, in some opinions, in regards to Italians, Irish, Jews, and other historically discriminated-against classes, see Karen Brodkin's How Jews Became White Folks. Scanning Amazon, there appear to be a number of valid criticisms against it, but I found the chapter I read for a class at least to be a revelatory socio-political analysis of US racial politics, at least for one not already immersed in the literature of that field.