Speaking of subtext...and racism...
Brought to my attention via Alas, a blog:
"Over at the Weekly Standard, Dean Barnett tries to downplay Obama’s speeches:
In spite of Obama’s obvious strengths in this area, questions linger regarding Obama’s gifted speechifying. Do his speeches give us a glimpse at a very special man with a unique vision? Or are we merely witnessing a political one-trick pony? Yes, Obama can turn a phrase better and do more with a Teleprompter than any other modern era politician. But does his special skill set here actually mean anything, or is it instead the political equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs-unusual and riveting, but not especially significant?"
As soon as I saw this, I had to read it out loud to my seniors. You see, we're just finishing a unit on literature in discourse, in which we've read Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and one of the quotes from Conrad from which we've gotten a lot of mileage is the one in which Marlow describes his helmsman thusly: "...to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs." The parallel is stupefying. And thoroughly racist.
Now, there are only two comments at Alas, a Blog at this point, but both of them downplay the racist nature of a comment like this, disregarding the dehumanization that automatically comes with comparing a human to an animal, and equating a comment like this to any other insult. These are, of course, just more evidence for the problem at hand: that it is our culture that is racist, and there is no denying it once you stop thinking of racism as individual acts at precise times and places, and start thinking of it as the default position of a culture that was built on a foundation of an "Us vs. Them" perspective. Also, and it needs to be said over and over again, the relationship between racial mistakes made by a majority about a minority and vice versa are not equal when there is a power structure that backs up the majority view, and claims that "black racism against whites is just as bad," are just staggeringly disingenuous.
Last week our professional development Wednesday was spent with a woman from Westfield State College (recently relocated from Seattle, so if you google her, it will say that she's at UW), Robin Di Angelo, a professor of multicultural studies who gives workshops in cultural competency (and a white woman, FWIW.) I was happy to see that this was exactly the position she took, mostly because it's been a large part of my purpose for this unit for the last 5 years or so that I've been teaching it. I took a few notes during the PD, intending to write about it here anyway, so let me do it now in this context.
Robin's major thesis was that the dichotomous nature of the way we view racism in this culture makes it impossible to talk about. For USians, racist=evil, and you are either racist and evil, or good and not-racist. There is no room for any middle, because any taint of racism whatsoever is viewed as a judgment of moral condemnation. Therefore, this "white fragility," as she calls it, results in no stamina for a discussion of racism, to endure any racially-related stress, and the result is that POC are bullied into not bringing it up, or else rewarded for staying silent about it.
Instead, she suggests, we could begin to move toward a model in which there is a spectrum of racism on which you can be seen as either more or less racist, but never not-racist. For it is not possible to be not-racist in our society, in which all of the things we carry in the invisible knapsack were given whites without our knowledge or choice. It's not something you accept, it's automatic. And conversely, anyone who does not carry this knapsack of privilege is made to feel automatically inferior. We begin to digest the visual clues as very small children, just as we digest gender roles. It's not usually explicitly taught, but it is most definitely learned. Robin did a great job of pulling out and showing us some of the visual clues. My favorite was an American Express ad made up of a crowd of white faces with the caption "Membership has its privileges." Anika Nailah, until recently our Diploma Plus! representative and published author was co-presenter and her perspective on what it's like to be a young girl of color inundated with the images of perfect beauty all girls are inundated with, with the added element of white=beautiful, just tore my heart out.
The other dichotomy Robin pointed out that was very useful and in need of deconstructing was that of intention vs. impact. "But that's not what was meant!" can be claimed until the cows come home, but it's near well irrelevant as long as the impact was harmful. One of my eighth graders might not be intending to hit his classmate when he threw a pencil across the room, but that was the result, and he will still have to face the consequences. Intent matters of course, I'm not saying it's completely irrelevant. But in our hysteria over proving we're not racist, it's become everything, and it most certainly is not.
So, if my pointing out that Dean Barnett's comment was completely, totally, and in all ways racist inspires in you the response, "But he didn't mean it that way," or "it's just a metaphor," or "all insults of black people are equally racist, so this one isn't really that bad," try thinking about responding to someone who refuses to keep silent about racist language, not in the traditional way: "I could never make a racial mistake! How dare you," but in Robin Di Angelo's suggested way: "I cannot avoid making racial mistakes. Thank you."
It's the only way we're every really going to be able to start doing something different. Change the framework, change the conversation.
Oh, and the seniors? Their first reactions were gasps and immediate recollection of Heart of Darkness and the racism of that metaphor. Then they told me to go blog about it. So I did. The next step is to get them to do it, but for now I'm happy that they're beginning to be able to have this conversation with me.
"Over at the Weekly Standard, Dean Barnett tries to downplay Obama’s speeches:
In spite of Obama’s obvious strengths in this area, questions linger regarding Obama’s gifted speechifying. Do his speeches give us a glimpse at a very special man with a unique vision? Or are we merely witnessing a political one-trick pony? Yes, Obama can turn a phrase better and do more with a Teleprompter than any other modern era politician. But does his special skill set here actually mean anything, or is it instead the political equivalent of a dog walking on its hind legs-unusual and riveting, but not especially significant?"
As soon as I saw this, I had to read it out loud to my seniors. You see, we're just finishing a unit on literature in discourse, in which we've read Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Achebe's Things Fall Apart, and one of the quotes from Conrad from which we've gotten a lot of mileage is the one in which Marlow describes his helmsman thusly: "...to look at him was as edifying as seeing a dog in a parody of breeches and a feather hat, walking on his hind-legs." The parallel is stupefying. And thoroughly racist.
Now, there are only two comments at Alas, a Blog at this point, but both of them downplay the racist nature of a comment like this, disregarding the dehumanization that automatically comes with comparing a human to an animal, and equating a comment like this to any other insult. These are, of course, just more evidence for the problem at hand: that it is our culture that is racist, and there is no denying it once you stop thinking of racism as individual acts at precise times and places, and start thinking of it as the default position of a culture that was built on a foundation of an "Us vs. Them" perspective. Also, and it needs to be said over and over again, the relationship between racial mistakes made by a majority about a minority and vice versa are not equal when there is a power structure that backs up the majority view, and claims that "black racism against whites is just as bad," are just staggeringly disingenuous.
Last week our professional development Wednesday was spent with a woman from Westfield State College (recently relocated from Seattle, so if you google her, it will say that she's at UW), Robin Di Angelo, a professor of multicultural studies who gives workshops in cultural competency (and a white woman, FWIW.) I was happy to see that this was exactly the position she took, mostly because it's been a large part of my purpose for this unit for the last 5 years or so that I've been teaching it. I took a few notes during the PD, intending to write about it here anyway, so let me do it now in this context.
Robin's major thesis was that the dichotomous nature of the way we view racism in this culture makes it impossible to talk about. For USians, racist=evil, and you are either racist and evil, or good and not-racist. There is no room for any middle, because any taint of racism whatsoever is viewed as a judgment of moral condemnation. Therefore, this "white fragility," as she calls it, results in no stamina for a discussion of racism, to endure any racially-related stress, and the result is that POC are bullied into not bringing it up, or else rewarded for staying silent about it.
Instead, she suggests, we could begin to move toward a model in which there is a spectrum of racism on which you can be seen as either more or less racist, but never not-racist. For it is not possible to be not-racist in our society, in which all of the things we carry in the invisible knapsack were given whites without our knowledge or choice. It's not something you accept, it's automatic. And conversely, anyone who does not carry this knapsack of privilege is made to feel automatically inferior. We begin to digest the visual clues as very small children, just as we digest gender roles. It's not usually explicitly taught, but it is most definitely learned. Robin did a great job of pulling out and showing us some of the visual clues. My favorite was an American Express ad made up of a crowd of white faces with the caption "Membership has its privileges." Anika Nailah, until recently our Diploma Plus! representative and published author was co-presenter and her perspective on what it's like to be a young girl of color inundated with the images of perfect beauty all girls are inundated with, with the added element of white=beautiful, just tore my heart out.
The other dichotomy Robin pointed out that was very useful and in need of deconstructing was that of intention vs. impact. "But that's not what was meant!" can be claimed until the cows come home, but it's near well irrelevant as long as the impact was harmful. One of my eighth graders might not be intending to hit his classmate when he threw a pencil across the room, but that was the result, and he will still have to face the consequences. Intent matters of course, I'm not saying it's completely irrelevant. But in our hysteria over proving we're not racist, it's become everything, and it most certainly is not.
So, if my pointing out that Dean Barnett's comment was completely, totally, and in all ways racist inspires in you the response, "But he didn't mean it that way," or "it's just a metaphor," or "all insults of black people are equally racist, so this one isn't really that bad," try thinking about responding to someone who refuses to keep silent about racist language, not in the traditional way: "I could never make a racial mistake! How dare you," but in Robin Di Angelo's suggested way: "I cannot avoid making racial mistakes. Thank you."
It's the only way we're every really going to be able to start doing something different. Change the framework, change the conversation.
Oh, and the seniors? Their first reactions were gasps and immediate recollection of Heart of Darkness and the racism of that metaphor. Then they told me to go blog about it. So I did. The next step is to get them to do it, but for now I'm happy that they're beginning to be able to have this conversation with me.