"comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable" is not just a bumper sticker for me
What I Have Learned Through These Conversations About Race *
*[This is a collection of lessons that have been particularly influenced by events that have taken place over the past few months. If you don't know what these events are: Avalon's Willow has a timeline of the beginning of Recent Events, rydra_wong has a summary of more recent Recent Events, and wychwood has a roundup of absolute must-read posts stemming from Recent Events. Full documentation and newsletter-linkroundup found through rydra_wong, the Archivist Of The Revolution, here and here. If you are white, and are totally new to these conversations, read paradoxdragon's Baby Stepping Away From Racism: A Guide For White People and Amp's How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism (A Guide For White People) before you read any of the above.
In most cases these points are abstracted from the issue of racism in particular; this is because I believe they are applicable to many scenarios involving discrimination, prejudice, and pain. My ability to make that abstraction is, itself, a reflection of my white privilege. I hope that by providing these links, as well as a link to verb_noire, fight_derailing, 50books_poc, debunkingwhite, deadbrowalking, the People of Color SF Carnival, the Remyth Project, and the International Blog Against Racism del.icio.us bookmarks, I can provide some of the context in which I came to think about this, and redirect any credit to the important conversations that are going on. If I have failed in my understanding, or my articulation thereof, the fault is entirely mine.
I have been trying to make this post for three months. It's time for me to accept that I won't get it perfect and at least get it done.]
1. This situation isn't about me. No, really, it isn't about me. I have framed these points as I-statements in an attempt to avoid the trap of appearing as though I am suggesting I have the One True Answer. (I don't.) They are a collection of things I believe, have come to understand, and strive to incorporate into my life.
1.1. In this situation, it is about the fact that my friends of color, fellow fen of color, and the actual human person (whether pseudonymous or not) on the other side of the screen or sitting next to me are hurting.
1.2. It is not about me in particular, but my abstracted actions or inactions as a white person can very easily contribute to the systemic hurt that people of color experience.
1.3. It is my obligation to recognize this. It is no one else's obligation to teach me.
2. My experiences with sexism (as a woman), homophobia (as a lesbian), and ableism (as a disabled person) do not grant me immunity from having to be mindful about racism (as a white person), classism (as a middle-class person), transphobia (as a cisgendered person), or any other -ism or -phobia in which I am a member of the privileged class.
2.1. In fact, they often mean I have to be more careful, particularly to avoid the fallacy of the commutative process of oppression. I am not immune from having to confront and face my privilege in one area because I lack privilege in another.
2.2. Likewise, my experience of lacking a particular privilege is not the only way to experience lacking that particular privilege, and my experience of possessing a particular privilege is not the only way to experience possessing that particular privilege. My experience is not everyone's experience.
2.3. There are things that I can learn from abstracting my experiences of lacking particular privileges, to work towards a better understanding of the hypothetical situation of what it would be like to lack a particular privilege I do actually possess. There are things I can't learn from that thought-experiment abstraction. It is critically important that I remember both halves of this statement.
3. It is my responsibility to educate myself about what will add to the pain of others. It is my responsibility to do my own homework. Nobody owes me an education.
3.1. Some people have provided me an education anyway, by writing and speaking their truths for everyone to see. I owe them an incredible amount of gratitude.
3.2. I need to be careful when I am expressing this, because it is so very easy to cause pain by saying it; it is easy to imply that their lives and their lived truths exist for the education and benefit of others, and I need to constantly be aware that any expression of gratitude for speaking can easily turn into a form of othering and objectification.
4. If someone is talking about their experiences with what it is like to live without a particular privilege, I need to stop and listen.
4.1. This is because the voices of those without privilege have been historically silenced and written out of the narrative. This silencing causes pain. I should strive to avoid contributing to this silencing.
4.2. This is also because the experiences of people who are not me help contribute to my understanding of the diversity of the human experience, which in turn allows me to be mindful of the impact my words, my actions, and my behavior have on others.
4.3. This has been, is, and will continue to be as uncomfortable as hell.
4.4. That is not an excuse not to do it.
5. If someone says to me anything that essentially means "you are perpetuating the pain that our society causes me" ("this X is troublesome", "this X is racist,", "this X is sexist", "this X is ableist", etc), no matter how the statement is phrased, I need to immediately stop, take a deep breath, and not even begin to attempt to refute this statement, explain why the explainer is wrong, or offer alternate readings of the scenario until I thoroughly understand why that person is saying this. To do otherwise is to leap to the defensive and cause harm to the person doing the pointing out, especially if the person pointing this out is already hurting.
5.1. In fact, even once I understand why that person is saying such a thing, even if I disagree that X is troublesome or if I believe that X has an alternate reading, this does not change the fact that the person who has pointed it out is hurt by X.
5.2. Historically, the tactic of pointing out alternate, non-racist (sexist, ableist, classist, [...]) interpretations is used to silence the voices of those who are experiencing pain, by attempting to dismiss, trivialize, or explain away their reactions as unimportant.
5.3. Historically, the tactic of pointing out that a different -ism or -phobia may also be influencing or causing the situation is also used to silence the voices of those who experience that pain, by attempting to deflect the conversation to the discussion of a different form of privilege and oppression, thus dismissing, trivializing, or explaining away the reactions of the people who point out the situation.
5.4. I should, therefore, strive not to do either: no matter what my intent might be in sharing my opinion, no matter what my opinion might be, I should constantly ask myself whether adding my opinion will or could be interpreted as an attempt to silence others. I will fail at this more often than I will fail at anything else on this list, because I am an opinionated person and my rhetorical style is often strident. I should not allow myself to use this as an excuse. I should do my absolute best to remain mindful of this trap.
6. If I have made a statement or taken an action that displays my privilege, I should remember that my unconscious biases will work against my hearing the voices of those who lack that privilege who attempt to point it out to me. I should do my level best to overrule this tendency in myself.*
*(This is the one instance where I'll break the pattern of I-statements to clarify: it is well-documented, both in academic studies and in the conversations that take place here on LJ, that a white person will be less likely to hear a person of color when the topic is racism, a man will be less likely to hear a woman when the topic is sexism, a straight person will be less likely to hear a gay person when the topic is homophobia, etc. While it happens in every discussion about privilege, the pattern is most prevalent, and most toxic, in conversations about race. In multiple instances during Recent Events, a white person would ignore, dismiss, or attack the statements of a person of color, until another white person repeated the exact same statement. This is not an isolated pattern.)
6.1. If I have a particular privilege, and the topic of conversation revolves around that privilege, I should do my level best, as much as possible, to convey to others who hold that privilege my understanding of the foundational blocks of privilege and the exercise thereof if they are demonstrating that they don't understand it.
6.2. If I have identified someone's exercise of a particular privilege that I share, and a conversation has not already begun around it, I should do my best to begin a conversation explaining to that person my understanding of why what they have said or done is problematic, to the extent that I believe that person will listen in good faith.
6.3. It is important to do this both in an attempt to overcome that unconscious bias, and to relieve the pressure on the people who are most affected by the problem to educate others for the thousandth time.
6.4. I should also remember that in those conversations, it is not about me, and I should strive to never allow my participation in those conversations to refocus the conversation around me or the members of my privileged class.
6.5. I will not always have the spoons to do this. I should not speak only to make apologies for this. Doing so refocuses the conversation on me and contributes to the silencing of the voices who should be heard far more than I should.
6.6. Failure to speak up in any given situation may not be assent, but the ability to choose not to engage during a situation is, itself, a privilege. I should remember this, and be mindful of my choices.
6.7. There can never be a perfect balance between being quiet and listening so as to avoid participating in the systemic silencing of others, being quiet and listening so as to have time and space to come to terms with my own reactions before participating in a conversation so I do not accidentally make things worse, speaking up to call others' attention to problematic statements they have made and explain why those statements can be problematic, and speaking up to stand in solidarity with those who have been hurt. This is because these elements are not a continuum, nor an equation that has an optimal solution. Often there are compelling reasons to choose both of the two mutually exclusive options. This does not excuse me from being mindful of all of the interlocking arguments speaking to each choice.
6.8. I should always make that choice to speak or not to speak rather than defaulting to a particular choice. I should choose to act, not allow myself to react, whether my ultimate choice is to speak or to be silent.
7. In space I control, online or face-to-face, it is my responsibility to also influence and moderate any conversation I am a part of to ensure that others feel as safe as possible.
7.1. When I do speak in the online sphere, I should take responsibility for controlling any resulting conversation that occurs in any space I have control of, to ensure that the conversation does not cause others pain. If I don't have the time or the spoons to exercise that moderation, I should not allow conversation. I should not allow a conversation I begin to be used to hurt others.
7.2. In the face-to-face sphere, I should strive to not begin, accidentally or mindfully, a conversation about a privilege I possess in a group consisting of both those who have that privilege and those who don't; I should strive to allow those who do not have that privilege to choose whether or not to begin the conversation.
7.3. If that face-to-face group conversation about a type of privilege begins, I should strive to be mindful of the comfort levels of the people who do not possess that privilege. I should shut up and listen if they want to talk about it, and I should help them in efforts to change the topic if they don't want to talk about it.
7.4. In both the online and face-to-face spheres, I should actively work against any attempt to derail or refocus a conversation about a particular privilege on the reactions of those who possess that privilege.
8. In any situation, when I have power -- institutional power, the power that comes from privilege, specific power, personal power, etc -- it is my responsibility to be aware that I have that power, and to use it to further, not destroy, inclusiveness and respect.
8.1. It is hard for me to recognize that I have power in a situation.
8.2. It is also often hard for me to identify how I could use that power in a situation to further inclusiveness and respect.
8.3. This does not excuse me from trying to do so.
9. I am going to fuck up.
9.1. I should not use this fact as an excuse for not trying. I should not use this fact to excuse myself after-the-fact once I have become aware that I have caused hurt. It does not matter whether I intended to cause pain. It matters that I did.
9.2. When I fuck up -- not if, but when -- an honest apology is always appropriate, as long as I am not simply trying to make the other person go away, trying to feel better about myself, or trying to display how 'progressive' or 'enlightened' I am.
9.3. I am not doing this for the approval of others. I am doing this because I believe it is my responsibility to work towards mindfulness.
9.4. When someone does me the very great courtesy of pointing out that I have failed to live up to these principles, it is my responsibility to figure out how to make amends, not their responsibility to tell me how to ameliorate my fuckups.
9.5. Sometimes I won't be able to ameliorate my fuckups. I should strive, at all times, to look for signs that my attempts to make apology or amends is making the situation worse. When this happens, I should shut up.
9.6. I should strive not to destroy or remove the record of my fuckups. If they happen online, I should preserve the full record of what I said, what I did, and the context in which it happened. I should resist the urge to flail around and make things worse. I should make a statement indicating my understanding of what I have done wrong, with apologies and without excuses, and I should make a single edit to the original statement in question (if possible) to direct people to that followup.
9.7. If I see people who wish to defend me either behaving badly, or further exascerbating the problem in my name, in spaces I control, I should both act to stop it and make a public request for people to desist. If I see this behavior happening in spaces I don't control, I should make a public request for people to desist.
10. These conversations are not wank. This is not petty infighting. This is not trivial. This is important as fucking hell.
10.1. tl;dr is never, ever an excuse for me to hide behind.
(All comments are screened. I will only unscreen comments that are critical of what I have said here or how I have said it, and only to engage with and document any instances of problematic statements I have thoughtlessly made, though I cannot promise to do so with any speed. Points 1, 6.4, 7, and 9.3 speak to why I am doing this screening. I am also contactable through the LJ messaging system.)
*[This is a collection of lessons that have been particularly influenced by events that have taken place over the past few months. If you don't know what these events are: Avalon's Willow has a timeline of the beginning of Recent Events, rydra_wong has a summary of more recent Recent Events, and wychwood has a roundup of absolute must-read posts stemming from Recent Events. Full documentation and newsletter-linkroundup found through rydra_wong, the Archivist Of The Revolution, here and here. If you are white, and are totally new to these conversations, read paradoxdragon's Baby Stepping Away From Racism: A Guide For White People and Amp's How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism (A Guide For White People) before you read any of the above.
In most cases these points are abstracted from the issue of racism in particular; this is because I believe they are applicable to many scenarios involving discrimination, prejudice, and pain. My ability to make that abstraction is, itself, a reflection of my white privilege. I hope that by providing these links, as well as a link to verb_noire, fight_derailing, 50books_poc, debunkingwhite, deadbrowalking, the People of Color SF Carnival, the Remyth Project, and the International Blog Against Racism del.icio.us bookmarks, I can provide some of the context in which I came to think about this, and redirect any credit to the important conversations that are going on. If I have failed in my understanding, or my articulation thereof, the fault is entirely mine.
I have been trying to make this post for three months. It's time for me to accept that I won't get it perfect and at least get it done.]
1. This situation isn't about me. No, really, it isn't about me. I have framed these points as I-statements in an attempt to avoid the trap of appearing as though I am suggesting I have the One True Answer. (I don't.) They are a collection of things I believe, have come to understand, and strive to incorporate into my life.
1.1. In this situation, it is about the fact that my friends of color, fellow fen of color, and the actual human person (whether pseudonymous or not) on the other side of the screen or sitting next to me are hurting.
1.2. It is not about me in particular, but my abstracted actions or inactions as a white person can very easily contribute to the systemic hurt that people of color experience.
1.3. It is my obligation to recognize this. It is no one else's obligation to teach me.
2. My experiences with sexism (as a woman), homophobia (as a lesbian), and ableism (as a disabled person) do not grant me immunity from having to be mindful about racism (as a white person), classism (as a middle-class person), transphobia (as a cisgendered person), or any other -ism or -phobia in which I am a member of the privileged class.
2.1. In fact, they often mean I have to be more careful, particularly to avoid the fallacy of the commutative process of oppression. I am not immune from having to confront and face my privilege in one area because I lack privilege in another.
2.2. Likewise, my experience of lacking a particular privilege is not the only way to experience lacking that particular privilege, and my experience of possessing a particular privilege is not the only way to experience possessing that particular privilege. My experience is not everyone's experience.
2.3. There are things that I can learn from abstracting my experiences of lacking particular privileges, to work towards a better understanding of the hypothetical situation of what it would be like to lack a particular privilege I do actually possess. There are things I can't learn from that thought-experiment abstraction. It is critically important that I remember both halves of this statement.
3. It is my responsibility to educate myself about what will add to the pain of others. It is my responsibility to do my own homework. Nobody owes me an education.
3.1. Some people have provided me an education anyway, by writing and speaking their truths for everyone to see. I owe them an incredible amount of gratitude.
3.2. I need to be careful when I am expressing this, because it is so very easy to cause pain by saying it; it is easy to imply that their lives and their lived truths exist for the education and benefit of others, and I need to constantly be aware that any expression of gratitude for speaking can easily turn into a form of othering and objectification.
4. If someone is talking about their experiences with what it is like to live without a particular privilege, I need to stop and listen.
4.1. This is because the voices of those without privilege have been historically silenced and written out of the narrative. This silencing causes pain. I should strive to avoid contributing to this silencing.
4.2. This is also because the experiences of people who are not me help contribute to my understanding of the diversity of the human experience, which in turn allows me to be mindful of the impact my words, my actions, and my behavior have on others.
4.3. This has been, is, and will continue to be as uncomfortable as hell.
4.4. That is not an excuse not to do it.
5. If someone says to me anything that essentially means "you are perpetuating the pain that our society causes me" ("this X is troublesome", "this X is racist,", "this X is sexist", "this X is ableist", etc), no matter how the statement is phrased, I need to immediately stop, take a deep breath, and not even begin to attempt to refute this statement, explain why the explainer is wrong, or offer alternate readings of the scenario until I thoroughly understand why that person is saying this. To do otherwise is to leap to the defensive and cause harm to the person doing the pointing out, especially if the person pointing this out is already hurting.
5.1. In fact, even once I understand why that person is saying such a thing, even if I disagree that X is troublesome or if I believe that X has an alternate reading, this does not change the fact that the person who has pointed it out is hurt by X.
5.2. Historically, the tactic of pointing out alternate, non-racist (sexist, ableist, classist, [...]) interpretations is used to silence the voices of those who are experiencing pain, by attempting to dismiss, trivialize, or explain away their reactions as unimportant.
5.3. Historically, the tactic of pointing out that a different -ism or -phobia may also be influencing or causing the situation is also used to silence the voices of those who experience that pain, by attempting to deflect the conversation to the discussion of a different form of privilege and oppression, thus dismissing, trivializing, or explaining away the reactions of the people who point out the situation.
5.4. I should, therefore, strive not to do either: no matter what my intent might be in sharing my opinion, no matter what my opinion might be, I should constantly ask myself whether adding my opinion will or could be interpreted as an attempt to silence others. I will fail at this more often than I will fail at anything else on this list, because I am an opinionated person and my rhetorical style is often strident. I should not allow myself to use this as an excuse. I should do my absolute best to remain mindful of this trap.
6. If I have made a statement or taken an action that displays my privilege, I should remember that my unconscious biases will work against my hearing the voices of those who lack that privilege who attempt to point it out to me. I should do my level best to overrule this tendency in myself.*
*(This is the one instance where I'll break the pattern of I-statements to clarify: it is well-documented, both in academic studies and in the conversations that take place here on LJ, that a white person will be less likely to hear a person of color when the topic is racism, a man will be less likely to hear a woman when the topic is sexism, a straight person will be less likely to hear a gay person when the topic is homophobia, etc. While it happens in every discussion about privilege, the pattern is most prevalent, and most toxic, in conversations about race. In multiple instances during Recent Events, a white person would ignore, dismiss, or attack the statements of a person of color, until another white person repeated the exact same statement. This is not an isolated pattern.)
6.1. If I have a particular privilege, and the topic of conversation revolves around that privilege, I should do my level best, as much as possible, to convey to others who hold that privilege my understanding of the foundational blocks of privilege and the exercise thereof if they are demonstrating that they don't understand it.
6.2. If I have identified someone's exercise of a particular privilege that I share, and a conversation has not already begun around it, I should do my best to begin a conversation explaining to that person my understanding of why what they have said or done is problematic, to the extent that I believe that person will listen in good faith.
6.3. It is important to do this both in an attempt to overcome that unconscious bias, and to relieve the pressure on the people who are most affected by the problem to educate others for the thousandth time.
6.4. I should also remember that in those conversations, it is not about me, and I should strive to never allow my participation in those conversations to refocus the conversation around me or the members of my privileged class.
6.5. I will not always have the spoons to do this. I should not speak only to make apologies for this. Doing so refocuses the conversation on me and contributes to the silencing of the voices who should be heard far more than I should.
6.6. Failure to speak up in any given situation may not be assent, but the ability to choose not to engage during a situation is, itself, a privilege. I should remember this, and be mindful of my choices.
6.7. There can never be a perfect balance between being quiet and listening so as to avoid participating in the systemic silencing of others, being quiet and listening so as to have time and space to come to terms with my own reactions before participating in a conversation so I do not accidentally make things worse, speaking up to call others' attention to problematic statements they have made and explain why those statements can be problematic, and speaking up to stand in solidarity with those who have been hurt. This is because these elements are not a continuum, nor an equation that has an optimal solution. Often there are compelling reasons to choose both of the two mutually exclusive options. This does not excuse me from being mindful of all of the interlocking arguments speaking to each choice.
6.8. I should always make that choice to speak or not to speak rather than defaulting to a particular choice. I should choose to act, not allow myself to react, whether my ultimate choice is to speak or to be silent.
7. In space I control, online or face-to-face, it is my responsibility to also influence and moderate any conversation I am a part of to ensure that others feel as safe as possible.
7.1. When I do speak in the online sphere, I should take responsibility for controlling any resulting conversation that occurs in any space I have control of, to ensure that the conversation does not cause others pain. If I don't have the time or the spoons to exercise that moderation, I should not allow conversation. I should not allow a conversation I begin to be used to hurt others.
7.2. In the face-to-face sphere, I should strive to not begin, accidentally or mindfully, a conversation about a privilege I possess in a group consisting of both those who have that privilege and those who don't; I should strive to allow those who do not have that privilege to choose whether or not to begin the conversation.
7.3. If that face-to-face group conversation about a type of privilege begins, I should strive to be mindful of the comfort levels of the people who do not possess that privilege. I should shut up and listen if they want to talk about it, and I should help them in efforts to change the topic if they don't want to talk about it.
7.4. In both the online and face-to-face spheres, I should actively work against any attempt to derail or refocus a conversation about a particular privilege on the reactions of those who possess that privilege.
8. In any situation, when I have power -- institutional power, the power that comes from privilege, specific power, personal power, etc -- it is my responsibility to be aware that I have that power, and to use it to further, not destroy, inclusiveness and respect.
8.1. It is hard for me to recognize that I have power in a situation.
8.2. It is also often hard for me to identify how I could use that power in a situation to further inclusiveness and respect.
8.3. This does not excuse me from trying to do so.
9. I am going to fuck up.
9.1. I should not use this fact as an excuse for not trying. I should not use this fact to excuse myself after-the-fact once I have become aware that I have caused hurt. It does not matter whether I intended to cause pain. It matters that I did.
9.2. When I fuck up -- not if, but when -- an honest apology is always appropriate, as long as I am not simply trying to make the other person go away, trying to feel better about myself, or trying to display how 'progressive' or 'enlightened' I am.
9.3. I am not doing this for the approval of others. I am doing this because I believe it is my responsibility to work towards mindfulness.
9.4. When someone does me the very great courtesy of pointing out that I have failed to live up to these principles, it is my responsibility to figure out how to make amends, not their responsibility to tell me how to ameliorate my fuckups.
9.5. Sometimes I won't be able to ameliorate my fuckups. I should strive, at all times, to look for signs that my attempts to make apology or amends is making the situation worse. When this happens, I should shut up.
9.6. I should strive not to destroy or remove the record of my fuckups. If they happen online, I should preserve the full record of what I said, what I did, and the context in which it happened. I should resist the urge to flail around and make things worse. I should make a statement indicating my understanding of what I have done wrong, with apologies and without excuses, and I should make a single edit to the original statement in question (if possible) to direct people to that followup.
9.7. If I see people who wish to defend me either behaving badly, or further exascerbating the problem in my name, in spaces I control, I should both act to stop it and make a public request for people to desist. If I see this behavior happening in spaces I don't control, I should make a public request for people to desist.
10. These conversations are not wank. This is not petty infighting. This is not trivial. This is important as fucking hell.
10.1. tl;dr is never, ever an excuse for me to hide behind.
(All comments are screened. I will only unscreen comments that are critical of what I have said here or how I have said it, and only to engage with and document any instances of problematic statements I have thoughtlessly made, though I cannot promise to do so with any speed. Points 1, 6.4, 7, and 9.3 speak to why I am doing this screening. I am also contactable through the LJ messaging system.)