IBARW - Some thoughts
It's International Blog Against Racism Week and I want to post something. I don't want to do a post reiterating the issues about Racism, both because there are some good entries from people on my flist (and so I assume yours) and because I assume that most of you already know about them. In a simple sense I assume that if you're here, reading this journal, that you agree that defining a person and discriminating against a person just because of their skin colour (or religion. or gender.) is stupid.
So I want to talk a bit about Whiteness because I think that it's really important to diffuse the boundaries between Subject/Object and Otherness by trying to think about the typical Subject (White, Middle-Class, Male) as the Object.
Ok, Some theory, which I'm going to explain in my own words without recourse to the academics who came up with it (but probably Judith Butler and Foucault cause they are my gods).
Most of us are writers and have some idea of what a subject is and what an object is in a sentence but it can be basically summarised as a Subject is the thing doing the action and the Object is what the action is being done to. Some academic theorists have pointed out that our culture automatically puts the [White, Middle-Class, Male] into the position of the Subject. What this means for the race discussion is that our culture's default setting is White. You don't have to define White - it's implicit - and this is incidious. Let me give an example. Die Hard 4. There's a scene where John McLean meets a guy whose name is Agent Johnson. Agent Johnson:I'm Agent Johnson, I'll take you through.
John McClane:[laughs] Agent Johnson?
Agent Johnson:That's right.
He's laughing because Agent Johnson is an Asian character played by Yancey Arias and he assumed that Johnson would be, by default, White.
Another concept that forms part of my understanding of the problems with the way we think about race is the idea of Otherness or the Other. Everything has to be in opposition to something else and that else is the Other. This is one of the most frustrating parts of academic discourse for me because it ends up defining everything as not!the Subject so Queer means not!Het and Raced means not!White (and Woman means not!Man) rather than each of things being a diverse mix which includes the Subject.
What I'm trying to suggest here is that we need to include White as a race in the way we think about race.
This is not one of those, oh but we've got it bad too and therefore we don't have to do anything about ourselves, kinds of concepts. Instead it's a powerful tool to look at Privilege. Because I am the Subject, my experience of race is different, and while I personally don't know what racial prejudice feels like, I can own my own thoughts and behaviours and challenge the preconcieved ideas that lead to me being placed in a position of Privilege (which I giggle at, because anything that's an accident of birth which leads to Privilege is so unimpressive).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I try to think of White as an ethnicity, it's no greater or more powerful, or more right, than any other ethnicity - we don't all need to be assimilated into Whiteness for example, but it's as much a set of experiences which define our values and culture as being a part of any other ethnicity.
[IMHO: I also want to say something about the lack of ethnicity in White colonial nations (because we are the Subject, we have no ethnicity or culture or values) causing a kind of disconnectedness and a desperation to define what our culture is (particularly in Australia) - everybody wants to have a culture they belong to and I think one of the priveleges of being raced is a clearer definition (even when it's being ascribed based as Other to White) of culture. White itself is excessively diverse and a German citizen and a Scottish citizen will have quite different values and culture but will still be expected to have the same culture as everyone else who's white (and yes I think this follows into every other ethnicity - goddess I love the complexity)]
So I want to talk a bit about Whiteness because I think that it's really important to diffuse the boundaries between Subject/Object and Otherness by trying to think about the typical Subject (White, Middle-Class, Male) as the Object.
Ok, Some theory, which I'm going to explain in my own words without recourse to the academics who came up with it (but probably Judith Butler and Foucault cause they are my gods).
Most of us are writers and have some idea of what a subject is and what an object is in a sentence but it can be basically summarised as a Subject is the thing doing the action and the Object is what the action is being done to. Some academic theorists have pointed out that our culture automatically puts the [White, Middle-Class, Male] into the position of the Subject. What this means for the race discussion is that our culture's default setting is White. You don't have to define White - it's implicit - and this is incidious. Let me give an example. Die Hard 4. There's a scene where John McLean meets a guy whose name is Agent Johnson. Agent Johnson:I'm Agent Johnson, I'll take you through.
John McClane:[laughs] Agent Johnson?
Agent Johnson:That's right.
He's laughing because Agent Johnson is an Asian character played by Yancey Arias and he assumed that Johnson would be, by default, White.
Another concept that forms part of my understanding of the problems with the way we think about race is the idea of Otherness or the Other. Everything has to be in opposition to something else and that else is the Other. This is one of the most frustrating parts of academic discourse for me because it ends up defining everything as not!the Subject so Queer means not!Het and Raced means not!White (and Woman means not!Man) rather than each of things being a diverse mix which includes the Subject.
What I'm trying to suggest here is that we need to include White as a race in the way we think about race.
This is not one of those, oh but we've got it bad too and therefore we don't have to do anything about ourselves, kinds of concepts. Instead it's a powerful tool to look at Privilege. Because I am the Subject, my experience of race is different, and while I personally don't know what racial prejudice feels like, I can own my own thoughts and behaviours and challenge the preconcieved ideas that lead to me being placed in a position of Privilege (which I giggle at, because anything that's an accident of birth which leads to Privilege is so unimpressive).
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I try to think of White as an ethnicity, it's no greater or more powerful, or more right, than any other ethnicity - we don't all need to be assimilated into Whiteness for example, but it's as much a set of experiences which define our values and culture as being a part of any other ethnicity.
[IMHO: I also want to say something about the lack of ethnicity in White colonial nations (because we are the Subject, we have no ethnicity or culture or values) causing a kind of disconnectedness and a desperation to define what our culture is (particularly in Australia) - everybody wants to have a culture they belong to and I think one of the priveleges of being raced is a clearer definition (even when it's being ascribed based as Other to White) of culture. White itself is excessively diverse and a German citizen and a Scottish citizen will have quite different values and culture but will still be expected to have the same culture as everyone else who's white (and yes I think this follows into every other ethnicity - goddess I love the complexity)]