From a clueless white woman, on RaceFail2009

[lalouve]

I have not been posting much, and commenting sparsely, but two things have now annoyed me sufficiently that I feel the need to vent. I know I still don't understand much about racism, but some of it should be blatantly obvious to anyone who's ever opened a book on feminism.

One thing was reading davidlevine 's entry on writing CoC, and especially this comment

Comments

[green_knight]

I agree with most of what you say, but I happen to believe that the best discussions happen when the other side does not feel attacked, belittled, or manipulated. And while there will never be a hundred percent consensus on what consists 'emotionally loaded language' I think both sides - speaker and listener - have a duty to try and contribute to a thoughtful discussion.

In an informal medium such as livejournal, I don't mind people saying 'I am angry/hurt/frustrated;' but I *do* feel that a lot of language was needlessly polarizing and disrespectful of other people's experiences, which stoked the emotional fires, and, in many cases I saw, distracted from the real issues.

[lalouve]

Not sure I'm reading you right: Do you mean that white people felt attacked and belittled, or that PoC did? I rather got the impression that PoC (and allies) did feel attacked and belittled, and when they responded got told to use a different tone.

[green_knight]

I think both sides did. I can't speak from the experience of PoC, but I *can* speak for myself (with plenty of experience of being on the wrong side of priviledge) that I find the 'them and us' attitude that was brought to light (by both sides) most unhelpful.

No, I do not understand what it is like to be a person of colour in the US today, but a) I refuse to believe that it's a unified experience, and b) I refute the assumption that 'because I am white, I do not understand,' because actually, a lot of the experiences that have been told by PoC *were things I could relate to very well* as someone who does not fit in in more ways than one.

*Nobody* likes to hear that they don't feel what they do, that their experience doesn't count. I've seen it on both sides, and I felt it just stoked the fires :-(

[lalouve]

I doubt it is a unified experience - neither is being a white woman, after all. But precisely therefore, I think also that my own experience of othering is not the same as any PoC experience: I can relate, especially to being the recipient of othering, but it's never quite the same. Even when not fitting in, and being othered as woman (and for a number of other reasons), I am explicitly privileged in other ways. A WoC in my position is significantly less so.

[fierceawakening]

You know, I'm probably going to lose any and all cred I once had by saying this, but honestly, I've had the thoughts you quote too

[lalouve]

I don't think it necessarily entails loss of cred to admit that one has had such ideas and rections - I think the loss of cred occurs when one is a)not willing to see them as problemaic and b)gets passive-aggressively whiny about them.
Personally, I find the power issues easier to discuss when they're explicit. Does the depiction of a black bottom carry problematic connotations? Yes. But there is at least no doubt that the connotations are there, and that this is about power imbalance. I find it much more problematic when the power imbalance is camouflaged and hidden, as when (to use one example I read somewhere) NY in Sex and the City is entirely devoid of Jews until Charlotte falls in love with one. The absense is invisible.

[lalouve]

Also, I'm not sure that, in the current situation, there is a right way we can depict people we have been trained to see as Other. Some writers seem to succeed, but then in writing you can produce a lot more context. Maybe we need to see that the world is fucked up, and so will our art be, and work to change the world for future generations, also through being honest and sincere in our art - which I think you were being.

[fierceawakening]

Maybe we need to see that the world is fucked up, and so will our art be, and work to change the world for future generations, also through being honest and sincere in our art - which I think you were being.

Yeah, this is my view. And honestly I think this gets lost in some of these discussions. I think some of the people who (rightly) are so upset about how people like them are depicted miss the point hidden in what the defensive white folks are saying: that sometimes even when we've agonized over it, there's something that will come off wrong unless we yank POC from our worlds entirely, and we've made the choice to let that be.

Of course, in some cases, people are just ignorant and silly, romanticizing their savage bruisers or dreaming up we-sha-sha. But some of this stuff, sometimes... sometimes I do think it becomes an unfair pile-on

[browngirl]

Thank you so much for this post, not least:

I can understand, though not approve of, white men using the same old power techniques on women, LBGT, PoC, and whoever else they consider beneath them. I find it inexpressibly sad to see those techniques used by those groups themselves in order to dominate and oppress others.

I want to go back through a bunch of posts and paste that in as a comment. I won't (among many other reasons, you deserve better) but oh, if anything needed to be raad by so many participants, this does.

I also read the discussion in your comments with interest, though I think I'm going to refrain from joining in at this time.

[lalouve]

I'm not sure I deserve a thank you, but I very much appreciate it. I did consider saying the part you quote, roughly, in the debate, but felt it would probably not get heard, in the heat of the moment. Maybe I should have.
And I'm happy that I seem to be getting some things right. I work at becoming less clueless, eventually.