Talking about race with white people

We're all just one race: the human race, says white guy.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/don-atchison-mayor-of-saskatoon-...

The biggest embarrassment about the radio interview wasn't the deflection of how much the city is apparently doing, and how much better we are in his mind than Winnipeg, nor how much other people are suffering too, but that there was no mention of Neil Stonechild.

About the only good thing is that he came off really badly. Sadly, he is still running this city.

Wagezombie, I really liked that bicycle piece. I've always been very annoyed by the term "white privilege" for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I think racism is a problem of Black, Brown, Asian and here especially Indigenous people suffer discrimination, denial of rights, and in the case of Indigenous people, persecution and systemic violence. I've always viewed this as a matter of racism and discrimination, not "privilege", as we all have the RIGHT to the city and to circulate safely and have equal opportunity to jobs, housing etc. Secondly, I've always viewed the term "privilege" as applying to a small minority, defined by wealth, but also "breeding" aka inherited wealth and not only whiteness but the right kind of whiteness (WASP or some Northwestern European), private school education, prestigious higher education, passes to get jobs even if they are on the dim side (Bush fils, Trudeau fils). And in terms of power usually males.

Like the writer, I'm (mostly) white of various hues and origins (also some Caribbean, some Indigenous ancestry) and am very close to non-white people in terms of family ties. And grew up in the kind of house where there were books but at times not much food. Thus sent to a school in a "better" district and always felt the sting of the putdowns from far richer kids (one actually said, in false-sympathy: "she doesn't have the privileges we do".

Privilege certainly makes sense in terms of the odd tendency for police bullets to have a magnetic attraction to brown and black young men, or the very concept of driving or walking while Black. I think the huge discrepancy in terms of numbers of Indigenous women and girls missing and murdered , and the power élite's dismissal of this racist crime, merits a tougher term still. But the "check your privilege" line, usually proferred by postmodernist whites, not people of colour, strikes me as a means of shutting down conversation and overlooking the class struggle.

Slumberjack, odd how this jerk seems to forget that the original inhabitatns of what is now his riding were Indigenous people, probably the ancestors of the Mi'kmaq Nation.

Sam Adler-Bell: [url=http://www.alternet.org/culture/why-white-people-freak-out-when-theyre-c... White People Freak Out When They're Called Out About Race[/url]

[...]One of the things I try to work with white people on is letting go of our criteria about how people of color give us feedback. We have to build our stamina to just be humble and bear witness to the pain we’ve caused.

In my workshops, one of the things I like to ask white people is, “What are the rules for how people of color should give us feedback about our racism? What are the rules, where did you get them, and whom do they serve?” Usually those questions alone make the point.

It’s like if you’re standing on my head and I say, “Get off my head,” and you respond, “Well, you need to tell me nicely.” I’d be like, “No. Fuck you. Get off my fucking head.”

In the course of my work, I’ve had many people of color give me feedback in ways that might be perceived as intense or emotional or angry. And on one level, it’s personal—I did do that thing that triggered the response, but at the same time it isn’t only personal. I represent a lifetime of people that have hurt them in the same way that I just did.

And, honestly, the fact that they are willing to show me demonstrates, on some level, that they trust me.

[...]

If people of color went around showing the pain they feel in every moment that they feel it, they could be killed. It is dangerous. They cannot always share their outrage about the injustice of racism. White people can’t tolerate it. And we punish it severely—from job loss, to violence, to murder.

For them to take that risk and show us, that is a moment of trust. I say, bring it on, thank you.

When I’m doing a workshop, I’ll often ask the people of color in the room, somewhat facetiously, “How often have you given white people feedback about our inevitable and often unconscious racist patterns and had that go well for you?” And they laugh.

Because it just doesn’t go well. And so one time I asked, “What would your daily life be like if you could just simply give us feedback, have us receive it graciously, reflect on it and work to change the behavior? What would your life be like?”

And this one man of color looked at me and said, “It would be revolutionary.”

http://theeyeopener.com/2015/03/ryersonian-story-was-wrong-from-the-start/

I presume this story has been making the rounds.The National Post was certainly quick to spin it as a story of anti-white discrimination.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/03/16/two-students-barred-from-meeting...

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/09/politically-correct...

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What Seinfeld is reacting to is not the shrinking, ossifying death of comedy, as he seems to believe; it is the vibrant, expansive unfurling of comedy, and the multitude of growing pains that come along with it.

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Rachel Dolzeal is white and she’s been white since the day she was born.

Her parents say she is a mixture of Czech, German, and Swedish, which is to say Rachel is White, Whiter, and Whitest.  At some point in her life she decided to just BECOME Black.

With that whopper, she's like the George Costanza'of race relations.  "Is anyone here a marine biologist?"

Pretty interesting situation.  I've seen a lot of comments to the effect of if a man can choose to become a woman why can't a white person choose to become a black person.

Some arguments I've seen say it's because the white person treats being black like a comoditity  and haven't dealt with life long racisim.

Another argument is that she (or anyone) may have had black great grandparents or something so at what point does someone qualifiy to say they're black.

I have a hard time understanding why someone couldn't choose to identify with a race of their choosing. I think a lot of angst from this story is generated by the monitary factor.

It's a stupid comparison. Caitlyn never claimed she was born a biological female. If Dolezel had said "yes I was born white, but now I self-identify as black", there would no doubt be a lot of eye-rolling, but nobody would really care. The point is she's a liar.

I, Racist

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I don’t talk about race with White people because I have so often seen it go nowhere. When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people are racist. Recently, I’ve begun to understand that it’s more nuanced than that.

To understand, you have to know that Black people think in terms of Black people. We don’t see a shooting of an innocent Black child in another state as something separate from us because we know viscerally that it could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot.

...

Black people think in terms of we because we live in a society where the social and political structures interact with us as Black people.

White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are “you,” I am “one of them.” Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.

...

The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person says “Racism still exists. It is real,” and a white person argues “You’re wrong, I’m not racist at all. I don’t even see any racism.”

...

Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having to argue its very existence, is tiring, and saddening, and angering. Yet if we express any emotion while talking about it, we’re tone policed, told we’re being angry. In fact, a key element in any racial argument in America is the Angry Black person, and racial discussions shut down when that person speaks. The Angry Black person invalidates any arguments about racism because they are “just being overly sensitive,” or “too emotional,” or– playing the race card.

...

But here is the irony, here’s the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.

...

White people are in a position of power in this country because of racism. The question is: Are they brave enough to use that power to speak against the system that gave it to them?

So I’m asking you to help me. Notice this. Speak up. Don’t let it slide. Don’t stand watching in silence. 

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Seeing as the response to so much of this is those "not every guy" or "not every white person" defensive reactions, rather than trying to deal with the problem.  

There's this nuance....yes, that tiny word again that so richly deserves a special place in your vocabulary.....between power structures, techniques of power, and the people who are affected by them, which is most of us.  I would simply argue that people have been historically paternalized in certain ways that are similar to the way in which human experiences have been universally racialized.  The typical white person lives a racialized life as well but is of course affected differently by it.  To my mind at least, the juncture between experiences is where transformational dialogue stands the best chance.

I think it's an important gesture if people affirm 'not me,' or not in my name, or by the names given to describe the colour of our skin.  I think it is an affirmation to say that the situation of racism in our societies and all of the manifestations doesn't represent us.  The alternative is to say that it does represent us and we feel bad when that is pointed out.  That would be nonsense.  We affirm the opposite in so many ways by opposing the way we're ruled and the system that has been handed down.  To say anything else is part of an unproductive guilting process, for which people are rightly criticized for maintaining such an attitude that provides for 'hurt' feelings as you describe.  We're not at an AA meeting fessing up to having fallen off the wagon this week, or kneeling at the confessional for absolution.  It's not anyone's fault for having been born.  Not anyone's.  We should reject the exhaustion that this dichotomy assigns us to.  Certainly there are conversations out there that are not worth having, such as someone standing under a confederate flag claiming that they have nothing to do with racism.  That it's merely a cultural symbol.  We're sure it is, we agree.  Is there really any debate there?

I think WZ has the right idea.

When you fall into the "not all white people" defensive posture, you're making it about you.  It's not about you.  That's your privilege rearing its head.  Even the best of us have moments where we don't consciously process this.  It's hard to hear it's not about you, that no matter how well-intentioned you are, whatever act of hate and bigotry DOES reflect on you, me, us.  It does. 

Bit of a tangent, but I think germaine to the discussion, interesting article by Alan Mansbach I read yesterday:

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/08/ok_so_what_would_convince_you_that_racis...

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White identity doesn’t appeal to anybody on the left, except as something to complicate and dilute with ethnicity or politics or sexuality or class or anything else we can find, so as to feel marginally less complicit in a morally heinous system.

What about it? I don't see the problem. It's just a flag.

http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/canada/saskatchewan/story/1.3145801

... oh, and it's a symbol of freedom.

Smith - saw that. Thought of my Great Uncle Jim, the Saskatchewan Klansman. We've made so much progress since the 1920s, haven't we? Ugh.

Extra Old Stock:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/barbara-kay-theres-honour-and-...

Especially not out here, where you are at least as likely to be German or Ukrainian or something similar. Just as inclined to act like you own the damned place, though.

http://griotmag.com/en/white-man-in-that-photo/

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The White Man in That Photo

It’s a historic photo of two men of color. For this reason I never really paid attention to the other man, white, like me, motionless on the second step of the medal podium. I considered him a random presence, an extra in Carlos and Smith’s moment, or a kind of intruder. Actually, I even thought that that guy – who seemed to be just a simpering Englishman – represented, in his icy immobility, the will to resist the change that Smith and Carlos were invoking in their silent protest. But I was wrong.

The Wages of Whiteness...

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The “wages of whiteness” have not been paying off for any working class peoples, Caucasians included, across the long neoliberal era..

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 “Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.”

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Caught in the vicious victim-blaming webs of neoliberal capitalism and the great white lie of skin privilege, much of the white working class finds itself torn between suicidal self-loathing and revanchist white-nationalist hatred of the even worse-off Black and Latino lower and working classes.

Doris Day recorded a song that sums up my feelings about the spike in mortality rates.  Whatever will be in this case is entirely self inflicted imo because we are imbued with the capacity to reason.  Except that, if many are not imbued with that capacity, then this too is consistent with the properties of natural selection as harsh as that reality is.  We have available to us as a species quite a range of information with which to consider and inform our thoughts, our politics.  If the only system of governance poor white people have ever known has wound up subtracting even from the lifespans of its most ardent supporters, who continue to remain supporters instead of rising up in self defence like any animal would if being abused and tortured, then there is little that can be done for that segment of the population.  They represent the unadaptable.

Timebandit wrote:

I think WZ has the right idea.

When you fall into the "not all white people" defensive posture, you're making it about you.  It's not about you.  That's your privilege rearing its head.  Even the best of us have moments where we don't consciously process this.  It's hard to hear it's not about you, that no matter how well-intentioned you are, whatever act of hate and bigotry DOES reflect on you, me, us.  It does. 

Bit of a tangent, but I think germaine to the discussion, interesting article by Alan Mansbach I read yesterday:

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/08/ok_so_what_would_convince_you_that_racis...

Quote:

White identity doesn’t appeal to anybody on the left, except as something to complicate and dilute with ethnicity or politics or sexuality or class or anything else we can find, so as to feel marginally less complicit in a morally heinous system.

i agree with you on many levels and tks for the article.

Timebandit wrote:

Magoo - it's a paradox on the surface, but it's an attempt to personally dissociate from the racist element. In that sense, it becomes about you as an individual and downplays the larger social dynamic that we are all unable to escape.

To both of these sentences, no it isn't, and no it doesn't are my responses.  If everyone that isn't contending daily with the racist effects of this society clammed up about it, and didn't feel inclined to say 'not in my name' with respect to the problems, what impression would that leave on those who are subjected to the effects of racialization the most?  My sense is that they would infer that systemic racism is more prevalent than even they had imagined.  There's all this shit going on, and not a soul from the demographic not immediately affected in their daily lives by racism has anything to say in opposition to it.  It would be like saying 'sorry, but at the risk of being implicated as a selfish, narcissistic individual, I decline to make a statement that contradicts the systemic, racist order.  What you are saying amounts to an injunction to remain silent.  Or is it the case that prior to saying anything that opposes the systemic issues of a society that affects all of us in varying degrees, the statements must first be vetted and approved of?  To whom then must these statements be submitted?  The paradox is in employing systemic oppression to create an order of a different sort that infringes upon a person's ability to speak.

Did the Counter-Intelligentsia Ignore White America?

Further to the info posted at #139

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In a 1988 issue of Life magazine, I wrote about the high rate of suicide among white males and attributed this to what society expected of them. Superman, Spiderman, maybe? They’re supposed to be everybody’s Deux Ex Machina, the cavalry that arrives when individuals, groups, or even the globe are in trouble. I noted that as a black man, I could attribute my setbacks to racism and find plenty of data to back me up. Disputing the idea that racism is a drag on black progress has become a lucrative industry whose members have been called the counter-intelligentsia.

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What would have been the result had these trends been noticed twenty-five years ago, when they were first reported? Would the deadly social problems among white working class Americans–meth, heroin, alcohol, addiction, suicide–now be out of control? Will this report come as sobering news for the millions of white Americans whose situation has been ignored by the counter-intelligentsia, which could be considered a form of betrayal? Or will they continue to vote against their interests as they did in Kentucky last week?

Slumberjack wrote:

Doris Day recorded a song that sums up my feelings about the spike in mortality rates.  Whatever will be in this case is entirely self inflicted imo because we are imbued with the capacity to reason.  Except that, if many are not imbued with that capacity, then this too is consistent with the properties of natural selection as harsh as that reality is.  We have available to us as a species quite a range of information with which to consider and inform our thoughts, our politics.  If the only system of governance poor white people have ever known has wound up subtracting even from the lifespans of its most ardent supporters, who continue to remain supporters instead of rising up in self defence like any animal would if being abused and tortured, then there is little that can be done for that segment of the population.  They represent the unadaptable.

Wow. So according to you poor white people are unadaptable, too stupid to be helped.

Timebandit wrote:

Bit of a tangent, but I think germaine to the discussion, interesting article by Alan Mansbach I read yesterday:

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/08/ok_so_what_would_convince_you_that_racis...

Quote:

White identity doesn’t appeal to anybody on the left, except as something to complicate and dilute with ethnicity or politics or sexuality or class or anything else we can find, so as to feel marginally less complicit in a morally heinous system.

He's a sanctimoneous jerk.

One of the pleasures of getting older and making a living the way you want to is that your social circle becomes rarified and the people who enter have been vetted.....

I did, however, become single and start dating last summer, for the first time since Bill Clinton was in office. I met a girl I really liked. I’ll call her Jessie. She was gorgeous, she was smart, and she liked to talk shit.....

Either he robbed the cradle or he met a woman.

It was heated and intense and the angrier I get the better I argue. Eventually I felt good enough about where we’d gotten, the progress we’d made, to go upstairs and sleep with her.

But it wasn’t really okay. We kept talking about it. Jessie admitted that she’d never really grappled with this shit, and expressed a beautifully sincere desire to try.

Wow lucky her, he got over himself long enough to sleep with her.

I felt confused and compromised, being with her. On one hand, I was introducing Jessie to all this radical race shit (radical only on the spectrum of white American politics, but still) and seeing her get a decent amount of it—even if the process wore me out. On the other hand, I was with somebody who didn’t get radical race shit, somebody who never would have made her way past the gatekeepers and into my little precious elitist smartypants cool white kid circles. And on the third hand, I had become (as my friend Sheila Heti writes) one of those insufferable men who want to teach a woman something.

Yeah well if he feels compromised by having sex with her maybe he shouldn't do it.

I’d had my fill of that ten years earlier when I published Angry Black White Boy.

Shades of Rachel Dolezal.

The two of them hit it off at first, but then I started to notice that actually, New York was probing and testing and fucking with Jessie in all these slick, subtle, devastating ways that Jessie didn’t notice and that I appreciated far more than I should have.

Because it's fine to fuck with white people because they are white. It may not be reverse racism but it is still ignorant hostile behavior that doesn't deserve any respect.

After two rounds of bourbon I went to the bathroom.  I returned to a full-blown shitstorm. New York had tried to buy Jessie a shot, and Jessie had declined because she’d already had enough to drink. New York tried to buy it anyway, but the bartender, a white dude, wouldn’t let her. New York got on some “Oh, a brown woman can’t buy a drink? My money’s no good here?” type shit, and Jessie took it at face value and tried to explain to her that the bartender was not legally allowed to sell a drink if the person the drink was intended for expressed unwillingness to imbibe it.

I walked back into the room just in time to hear Jessie say, with deep conviction and obvious frustration, “It’s not about race!”

They both looked at me like I was that dude Paris and they were the goddesses laying claim to the golden apple that started the Trojan War. I had no idea what had happened while I was taking a piss, but I said, “It’s never a good look to be the white girl claiming it’s not about race.”

New York and Alan are both insufferable intellectual snobs. Racism is real. Insisting that all claims of racism be humoured even when they are wrong is self-defeating. It's proof that PoCs see racism where there is none.

I listened until she had nothing more to say, and then I took a deep breath and told her that race always has something to do with it. That even if the bartender wasn’t consciously acting based on the color of New York’s skin, that didn’t mean she hadn’t experienced a long day, a long week, a long lifetime of interactions, slights, injustices, assumptions predicated on how she looked. That neither Jessie nor I nor the bartender himself was in a position to say whether this had indeed been one of them, or why it felt like it to New York, or whether she was wrong.

Saying this particular incident was not a case of racism is not denying her lifetime of injustices or her right to feel sensitive to percieved slights. I would hope that New York would feel relieved and comforted knowing that he didn't refuse to pour the drink Jessie didn't want because of New York's skin colour. Speaking of which, is skin colour an excuse to try force alcohol on someone who doesn't want it? New York was out of line.

You are not going to get people to accept accusations of racism where there is none. It's like you are saying all white people are guilty of racism so when we get accused even if that incident wasn't racist we should just hang our heads and accept the whipping because we deserve it anyway.

I could have acknowledged that sometimes being white and not an asshole is tricky and will challenge your intuitive sense of fairness or equality or the value or your own opinion and that on the grand scale of problems all of that is ultimately fucking hilarious. That sometimes your opinion and perspective truly are less important, and asserting otherwise is an #AllLivesMatter-esque form of trolling, an attempt to level a playing field that’s already tilted in your direction, and such behavior could get you punched in the face if anybody had any energy for that shit, which they don’t because it’s so low on the list of things worth being irate about, such as the fact that black college graduates are less likely to be granted job interviews that white felons, or the fact that a police officer’s surest way to reap a six-figure financial windfall is to murder a black kid.

Bunch of sanctimoneous BS. The bartender wasn't being racist. Nobody was saying PoC never face racism nor that this was some form of reverse racism. All Jessie and the bartender did was explain the reason why he couldn't pour Jessie another drink.

Mostly, I just want to sit white people down and say “Okay, so what WOULD convince you that racism is real, then?” But not really, because then I’d have to hear their answers.

Jessie and the bartender were not denying the existence of racism.

White identity doesn’t appeal to anybody on the left, except as something to complicate and dilute with ethnicity or politics or sexuality or class or anything else we can find, so as to feel marginally less complicit in a morally heinous system.

I have experienced a lifetime of sexism. Does that mean that the bartender also has to accept accusations of sexism from New York?

By that logic every man here should accept all accusations of sexism because you have all been guilty of sexism at some point in your lives.