White Men: a status update

image of book cover is from here

 

I have been struggling to know what to write here lately. I suspect it's just a period of inner exploration not quite meant for public display and discussion. For now, I'll offer up some disjointed thoughts and observations.

I'm dealing with an illness of a dear friend, and with transforming old increasingly dysfunctional patterns in my life that live most determinedly in my mind. The friend is demonstrating great courage and fortitude in confronting the condition which threatens her life. I am less diligent in challenging myself. She has fewer options than I do: to not fight is to be consumed with despair. I can distract myself sufficiently with opportunities afforded me by various forms of structural advantage.

I wonder how whiteness and maleness, as political realities, not biological realities or only-social and only-psychological ones, shape what whites and males know and do.

Let me get a bit more specific. I see whites, in particular, operate in the world as if our race is not consequential: as if our whiteness is sort of an neutral reality, like having relatively pale skin. I see how whites who live among each other in neighborhoods either conservatively view people of color as a threat or see people of color as liberally enriching the lives of whites. In either case, the force and ferocity of whiteness is not comprehended. So, for example, among the whites I know, white neighborhoods are viewed as good because they are white, not dangerous because they are white. White male-dominated societies are viewed as less dangerous than societies ruled by men of color. This means whites don't comprehend what it is whiteness does in the world.

Men do tend to "get it" that men are dangerous, including to women. What is especially atrocious is that too many men value being an apparent or actual threat to women or to other men, or more than a threat: a predator, a perpetrator, a tyrant and terrorist. What too many masculinist men value about themselves is the ability and practice of being threatening or domineering or destructive to females of all ages and to non-masculine males. But centering men in understandings of human cultures and "natures" is still common practice and not one seen as oppressive and harmful.

Equating male whiteness, when heterosexual, with health, with normalcy, with moral goodness, with accomplishment and attractiveness, with greatness and genius, means that whites and men are encouraged, systemically, to view people of color, and especially women of color, as not capable of defining and embodying the parameters of health, goodness, and accomplishment.

Hard work is something white men claim as an important value: "People shouldn't expect a hand-out" is something I've heard white men say all my life, usually casting aspersions on impoverished women struggling to survive with or without so-called "welfare". They do so never quite realising exactly how much society hands out resources for economic and social survival unjustly to white men only because they are white and male. When rich people in the West, most often white and male, are given so much that is unearned; it seems like one way to disperse the guilt is to project it onto those who get so much less.

White men I know too often carry the arrogance of those assumed by their race and sex peers to be mostly right and usually smart. I've yet to meet even a handful of white men who view their own values and viewpoints as necessarily lacking in merit, insight, and wisdom. White men do not typically view themselves this way: as a global minority out of touch with what most humans on Earth do to live and support one another's well-being.

Living with a structurally conditioned lack of stigma and institutionalised ascription of status means that one cannot fully see who one is or what one's actions do.

As a white male, I work to be conscious of my position, my location, and how my own inner struggles, however scary or perilous, are made less life-threatening due to all the forms of life support given to me inside a white and male supremacist society.

Rest in Peace, Donna Summer (born LaDonna Adrian Gaines) 31 December 1948 – 17 May 2012

photograph of Donna Summer is from here

Here at this blog, I endeaver to honor the contributions by women of color to music and the arts in general. Donna Summer was a major figure in the music scene of the mid to late 1970s. Her work continued beyond that time but in the late '70s, if you lived in the US and had access to popular media, it was almost impossible to not know what her latest hits were. Her voice was powerful and amazing. I was very sad to learn of her battle with lung cancer and that she didn't survive it.

Before reaching adulthood, I moved into and through the Disco era. It occurred during a time when some white het men's music was creating a punk rock scene: the music was anti-authoritarian, anarchistic, and deeply white het male supremacist. This branch of white het men's music was overtly condescendingly hostile to the music of women of color and of gay men regardless of race or ethnicity. At least that's how I experienced it. The white het male anger, though righteous, was generally indifferent to the plight of most people on Earth who are neither male nor white yet was assumed by the white men to be speaking for or about all of humanity. The attitude about artists putting out Disco hits, by anti-Disco white men, was that they were unserious and frivolous. They didn't understand the role of celebration and expressiveness of spirit and body that wasn't geared toward fury and destruction. Apparently they'd also never read the work of anarchist Emma Goldman. From Wikipedia:

At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. 

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world — prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own closest comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. (p. 56) 

This incident was the source of a statement commonly attributed to Goldman that occurs in several variants[, including:] 

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution!

One of her most pro-woman songs was "She Works Hard For The Money". Closing this post is a link to that 1983 music video. I hope that anarchist, anti-authoritarian white men learn about sexual, racial, and economic politics from this song and from the many voices of so many women of color in and beyond North America who have been speaking out and singing out for a very long time.

Please click on the following link to view the video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TKQcWEXSKU

.

Critique and Commentary about US Sexual and Gender Politics

image if from here

Part I: Viewpoints and Vision

a. The dominant cultural discourse on gender and sexual politics is, as far as I call tell, most hatefully expressed by orthodox allegedly heterosexual and non-trans religious leaders. It is most liberally expressed by Academics. And there is a kind of liberal-conservative version expressed in some corporate media and through some law.

b. All of those institutions (dominant religion, the Academy, corporate media, and Law), and more—such as marriage and the military--exist to promote and protect CRAP: corporate, racist, atrocious patriarchy, which is also to say capitalism, white supremacy, and male supremacy.

c. Seen this way, contemporary discussions and agendas by marginalised-while-dominant and/or oppressed-while-advantaged gendered and sexed people are usually uncritically white-centered, male-centered, and pro-capitalist. They don't or won't offer the larger society, or ourselves, terminology and campaigns, analysis and understandings, that oppose holding on tightly to those three pillars of CRAP.

d. If the alleged spokespeople for all of us who are sex and gender outsiders don't oppose those three pillars, among others, of CRAP, what happens to the radical and CRAP-resisting spokespeople's voices? Are they heard? By what means and mechanisms do over-privileged people among us—let alone the more dominant members of society—listen for them, and more importantly hear them, and even more importantly take them to be wise and worth adopting, centrally, into our own politics and cultures? How likely is it that their/our own alternate analysis and agendas will be accepted as “the right view” or “the most liberating project”?

e. Naming and agenda-setting, theory- and practice-building is happening in communities and through networks of people who are not white, not male, and not pro-capitalist. But to hear dominant contemporary conversation online and off, you wouldn't easily know it unless you're already part of those communities and networks.

f. How progressive or radical is it to ignore and/or silence the voices of those who are so marginalised that they don't even appear in corporate media (and most alternative media either)? How progressive or radical is it to believe and act as though these voices don't ought not matter to white and male supremacist spokespeople on matters of gender and sexual politics?

g. If our politics—our viewpoints and vision, our theory and our practice—is counter-CRAP, is at least attempting to be CRAP-resistant (if not also explicitly anti-CRAP), how do those of us who are white, male, and class-advantaged support and be responsible and accountable allies to the people promoting radical political positions who are not white, are not male, and are not class-advantaged?

I'm asking.

Part II: Theory and Practice

Contemporary theories and practices building from transgender, queer, and women's experiences tend to protect or deny either the oppressive and genocidal force of white supremacy, the subordinating and gynocidal power of male supremacy, or the generally dehumanising and Earth-murdering power of corporate capitalism.

What I see in plenty of dominant-while-marginalised Queer and Transgender Theory, is this idea: that lack of medical, legal, and cultural acceptance and celebration of “difference” is the central problem to be addressed by pro-liberation queer and pro-queer activists. Racism, misogyny, and corporate exploitation are maintained, in part, through the systematic denial and repression of ethnic and sexual differences. But this is done for the sole purpose of maintaining the power of the elites to protect grossly inhumane race, sex, and class hierarchies. Narrowing our struggle to accepting and celebration of difference among subordinates without opposing the congealed power of the (often ignored or enabled) elites in each hierarchy may allow us increasingly diverse sexual and gendered subcultures but not ones free the least privileged of us from oppressive and lethal raced, sexed, and economic force.

In my experience, no mention (let alone plan) of dismantling these hierarchies is required to come across as progressive. CRAP-denying policies, practices, and points of view pretend that diversity of perspectives and identities is the solution to our problem. In such environments, gender and sexual categories are self-chosen and individually identified. Meanwhile, CRAP's institutions and acted out ideologies force raced, classed, and sexed “identities” (read: denigrated and disenfranchised positions on a hierarchy) on us. They are fundamentally imposed and enforced, not chosen. To highlight the validity of subculturally chosen identities without also identifying how white and male supremacy are systems of brute force that exist in and around them, is to enable that raced and sexed force to continue to rule.

CRAP has demonstrated time and again that its ruling classes may tolerate (or ignore) many forms of difference in oppressed and marginalised people as long as the embodiers of those forms don't threaten to expose and challenge CRAP's key pillars of power-over social control and terrorism.

We have seen how far white, self-defined gay men can get in CRAP as long as they are (admittedly or not) anti-feminist, pro-racist, and pro-classist; they cannot achieve the power of white het men but they can acquire or continue to exhibit power not allowed to anyone female. In such politic practices we see how everything from prostitution to sexual sadism is promoted by white gay men as liberatory. I have seen white gay men condemn feminist critiques of prostitution and sexual sadism as virulently homophobic, ignoring how many of the critics are lesbians who are also harmed by homophobia. Meanwhile, when white het men are challenged in any way (or just as part of the routine maintenance of dominant systems of power), they argue that their oppressive political practice is natural, God-ordained, genetically encoded, or socially inevitable.

We have seen the resistance of white feminists, including lesbian feminists, refusing to acknowledge and center the experiences, voices, and analysis of radical womanist and feminist women of color, lesbian and not. In such politics we see the covert and overt maintenance of white power being promoted as “radical” while the white power that is present is denied. The naming of this has been understood as anti-feminist and woman-hating by some white women, as if the radical women of color being ignored and silenced aren't women and aren't working for women's liberation. But the ignoring and silencing--often enough through overt systematic physical and economic force and chronic murder--is fiercest by white het men.

We have seen how white, non-poor pro-transgender spokespeople (many of whom are not transgender) promote a view of sex and gender that is glaringly white and male supremacist. Women who have always been female, who are socially (and also often intimately) targeted for being female by non-trans men, are sometimes portrayed as anti-trans. Some of those pro-trans people simultaneously neglect to name their threatening, abusive, and oppressive heterosexist, misogynist, and male supremacist practices. These self-uncritical practices currently flourish in gender-conservative and gender-liberal environments, whether non-queer, queer, non-transgender, or transgender. But the most virulently anti-trans, anti-queer, and anti-lesbian communities are those ruled by white het non-trans men.

Part III: Concluding thoughts

Among liberal communities covertly protecting white and male power, there is an accepted practice of promoting “diversity” without radically interrogating such an idea as unequivocally good, or as unquestionably leading us to liberation. From what are we liberated through such a practice? How does a liberal challenge to “the gender binary” with no concurrent work end to white and male supremacy (race, sexual, and gender hierarchies) allow females, women, lesbians, and transgender people to be free from violence and dehumanisation on the collective level? How do we respond to individualistic understandings of liberation (usually sexist, classist, and racist) continually usurping class-based liberation struggles?

Many of these political perspectives and strategies are lacking a revolutionary practice of radical self-critique and accountability to those structurally (not morally) beneath socially advantaged people. These practices are also holding tight to at least one pillar of CRAP. Not naming these pillars when defining our struggles doesn't assist us in the project of liberatory social transformation. I call on all whites, all men, all pro-queer, pro-feminist, and pro-trans people, to responsibly seek out and center the analysis and agendas of Indigenous and non-Indigenous radical feminists and womanists of color.

The White Male His-story of Sexuality, and the Power of The Marginalised Voice

image is from here

Unlike some of my peers, I do not regard Sigmund Freud as unworthy of study. But nor do I place him at the center of such study. Across cultures and eras, white men have had some really bizarre ideas about sexuality and gender. They've theorised there's only one sex, and that there are only two (opposite) sexes. However many genders and sexes white men believe exist, they seem incapable of imagining a world in which men do not dominate and control women and "women's sexuality"--often enough a sexuality designed by men for men. I've watched enough white male science fiction wherein the white male writer or producer creates new worlds in future eras. I've watched enough to know that however far into the universe the white het male supremacist's mind goes, he cannot creatively conceive of women *not* dressing in tight outfits designed for his voyeuristic pleasure. He cannot conceive of her as not existing for him.

Whatever the theories, they have tended to serve both white and male supremacy against the bodies and and human rights of millions of women and girls of all colors and cultures. Their theories are also traditionally anti-lesbian and anti-gay. Their theories have functioned to promote the humanity of white (and usually het) men (the minority) while denigrating and demonising the humanity of everyone else (the majority). His inhumanity is often enough rendered invisible, or is termed something else--the product, perhaps, of unfortunate events early in his life. That white men, as a class, ensure that unfortunate events will systematically scar the lives of girls globally seems not to worry him. In this theories and in his world, only white men act out their pain in gynocidal and genocidal ways. White men traditionally theorise their pain as an explanation for their abusive actions. If painful childhoods, troubled by rape and invasion, were the source of acting out violence against other people, and if victimised people were allowed do violence to their perpetrators, men the world over would have a lot to worry about. And white men who travel the world over to rape trafficked and enslaved girls and women would have cause to worry a great deal.

What I look for in theory is a human story, a humane understanding, that reveals to the reader the role of white and male supremacy, among other forces of institutionalised ideology, in making things as they are. I look for theory to bring into focus the experiences and worldviews of the people who whites and men seek to silence and destroy.

One such theory of sexuality is found in Catharine A. MacKinnon's essay "Does Sexuality Have a History?", which may be read here:

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mqrarchive/act2080.0030.001/16:2?g=mqrg;page=root;rgn=full+text;size=100;view=image;xc=1

I've praised the following work before, and this time won't be the last. But one of the best essays on sexuality, one of the best theories on sex that I've seen, is the one that follows. Referencing the video (well, the audio), I don't quite understand the laughter from the audience at one point. Although times have changed and margarine isn't regarded in the same way as it was in the 1970s, nothing about her analogy is funny to me. Taken without today's negative associations, I see it as useful to her points, especially as it conjures such a tactile, sensual relationship to her ideas on the Erotic.

This is an early version of a speech and essay that later appeared in her brilliant collection of speeches and essays called Sister Outsider. It was delivered at a radical and feminist conference on pornography and prostitution in the late 1970s in San Francisco, CA, USA.



Here is a link to the speech as presented in that book:

http://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/08/uses-of-erotic-erotic-as-power-classic.html

Please consider the theories of radical feminist women of color as necessarily central to our understandings of all of us, and organise your revolutions around their ideas and visions.

image is from here

 

Censored News Honors Many Indigenous Women, selected by readers

poster image is from here

There are many groups of activists and heroes who are utterly ignored and willfully shut out of dominant society's cultural, economic, and political news. One such group is Indigenous women. In North America, there is a corporate media policy of not reporting news from an Indigenist perspective, or that is produced by Indigenous people. Anti-Indigenist white male supremacy works very hard to leave all of us with the idea that if Indigenous people exist and are activist, they must be men.

Leave it to Brenda Norrell at the very appropriately named "Censored News" website to publicly honor and make more widely visible the centuries-long reality of Indigenous women's activism. What follows is copied and re-posted with permissions granted by Brenda. She states:

Please feel free to repost this article and photo, with author and Censored News credits appearing at top of the article. Media, for contact info for interviews of the heroes: brendanorrell@gmail.com

Thank you to all the named and unnamed, recognised and unrecognised Indigenous women activists who fight battles unseen by most non-Indigenous people. And thank you, once again, to Brenda Norrell. Love and justice to you in 2012.

You may link back to the original site by clicking on the title just below. There are many more honored Indigenous activists named in that post beyond what I have re-posted here. I also provide at link back to the original site and article at the bottom of this post.

Censored News Person of the Year: The Indigenous Woman

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Who made a difference this year?

The Indigenous Person of the Year, selected by readers of Censored News, is the Indigenous Woman.

Debra White Plume, Morning Star Gali, Waziyata Win, Tantoo Cardinal, Kahentinetha Horn and her daughter Dr. Ojistoh Horn, Corrina Gould, Kandi Mossett, Louise Benally, Buffy St Marie, Rigoberta Menchu, Hacha C Norris, Cheyenne Bellecourt Eagleman and many more were selected by readers as the Person of the Year. Censored News focuses on Indigenous Peoples and human rights.

Debra White Plume, Lakota grandmother and longtime activist from Pine Ridge, S.D., received the most nominations. Shown in the top left photo, White Plume, grandmother and voice against uranium mining on Lakota lands, was among those arrested this year at the White House during the action to halt the Tarsands and Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline during September.

Gwen Caldwell said that Debra White Plume was her top choice. "I selected Debra, because she sets an excellent example of what we as women should be doing and how we should be living. She is humble courageous, speaks her truth with honor and integrity!"

CJ Christian said, "Debra White Plume has made herself visible before the UN, fighting to save the Black Hills and to stop the Keystone pipeline. She works tirelessly for the First Nations People with sincere devotion, dedication, spirituality and integrity."

Roxann Karonhiarokwas selected Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, and her daughter, Dr. Ojistoh Horn, the first female Mohawk medical doctor from Kahnawake. Roxann described the mother and daughter as, “An amazing duet and strong women."

Roxann said, “I nominated Ojistoh because she delivers our babies. Being a matrilineal society she is responsible and takes a hands on role in the delivery of the mothers of our nation." She added, "That woman does not sleep. She does house calls and even looks after people during family events on her time off! I love that beautiful woman. She’s an inspiration and deserves it!”

"Kahentinetha is a woman who always worked for our people! I am honored to say I know these lovely ladies personally.”

Ben Manuel selected four dynamic, tireless human rights warriors: "Waziyata Win, Jessica Yee, Morning Star Gali and Debra White Plume." Richard Flittie added another voice of recognition for Morning Star Gali and Corrina Gould, both longtime activists struggling to save sacred places and reclaim Indigenous lands in California.

Manuel was among many who selected Dakota activist Waziyata Win for her work to bring Indigenous perspectives to the Decolonize/Occupy movement. (Shown in top right photo. Click for Oakland video.)

Among the dynamic Native American youths honored was Kandi Mossett, who hosted the Indigenous Environmental Network annual gathering in her homeland this summer, was arrested at the White House protesting the Tarsands Keystone XL pipeline in September, and was featured as a voice to protect Mother Earth at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, in December.

Hahana Bear selected Kandi, shown in lower left photo at top of page. Kandi was compelled to speak out after the deaths of friends and family from the oil and gas trucks, and devastating pollution, on her homeland, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations in North Dakota, also known as Three Affiliated Tribes and Fort Berthold.

Indigenous Women Honored

Ruth Nolan honored Cahuilla Indian Elder and Tribal Leader Dr. Katherine Siva Sauvel, Morongo/Cahuilla, who passed away this past November.

Nolan said, “I selected Dr. Katherine Siva Sauvel, Cahuilla elder. elder, teacher and Cahuilla culture bearer (1920-2011) because she has been instrumental in saving the endangered Cahuilla language and way of life, and dedicated her life to passing along the oral histories and language and culture of the Cahuilla into the modern world. She was the first American Indian inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and is a co-founder of the Malki Museum, the first American Indian museum in the United States.

“I had the incredible honor and good fortune to have met and learned much from Dr. Sauvel through my California desert Indian scholarship and position at College of the Desert, and was and remain incredibly touched, professionally and personally, by her extreme generosity and gentle yet strong touch in all matters related to sharing with so many others her native culture, to which she dedicated her passion and life's work. She is deeply appreciated by people across the country and globe, and truly missed.”

Toni Reynolds selected Cheyenne Bellecourt Eagleman. “She tells it like it is. She doesn't care if people get upset with her or not. She fights for Native rights, works with young people, raises her own children as a single parent, and works with numerous other issues. She is very respected and well known.”

Richard Flittie honored Pte San Win. "She is a young Lakota woman who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and works hard to take care of all the people there who need help. She is raising money for propane and for firewood and continues in her fathers footsteps on the political front for the Lakota people.Things like the Keystone XL pipeline. And she is always supporting and encouraging the carrying on of tradition and ceremony for her people."

Jeanne Combo selected Wangari Muta Maathai, who passed away in September of this year. She started the Green Belt Movement in Africa in 1977. She was honored for working with women to improve their livelihoods by increasing their access to resources like firewood for cooking and clean water. "She became a great advocate for better management of natural resources and for sustainability, equity, and justice."

Becka Nan Amos selected Hacha C. Norris. “Hacha is a strong and fearless woman who has taken her own education seriously -- and by this I mean learning truths and concepts the overculture has tried to hide and/or eradicate. She understands deeply the wrongness of the overculture and speaks out about it regularly with her actions as well as her words. I have learned so much from her, especially concerning my own white privilege -- and that's what I respect the most about her -- she's not afraid to call out people on the ways of thinking that we so badly need to change but often cannot even see. She's got guts, and not the greedy kind.”

Hacha C Norris, said, “Debra White Plume, Bertha Gutierrez, Buffy St. Marie, Tom BK Goldtooth, Alex White Plume, Kris Barney, Evo Morales, Subcomandante Marcos, Rigoberta Menchú, and yes all the 'Protestors' (whose names are many) who fight for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, truth, justice and an end to capitalist exploitation and plunder of Mother Earth, and those who fight for food, heat, housing, education, jobs, health care and a voice.”

Bertha Gutierrez thanked Hacha C. Norris for selecting her. "I am humbled. All the people you have mentioned are people who inspire me and in no way shape or form do I feel I could fit in their shoes. Thank you for also inspiring me. Mi respeto para ti."

The women of the Blood Reserve are honored who faced off with oil and gas trucks this year in Alberta, Canada. On the southern border, O'odham Ofelia Rivas, and O'odham struggling against border agents and repression are honored. Northern Paiute traditional gatherer Wesley Dick, Kwassuh, is honored for refusing to accept the charges of Nevada Fish and Wildlife, and demanding justice. The longstanding efforts of Western Shoshone Carrie and Mary Dann are also recognized for their decades of struggle for the land and people. Lakotas Kent Lebsock, Debra White Plume and Alex White Plume, are honored for the Owe Aku International Justice Project.

The Navajo and Hopi of Black Mesa are honored who work together in their struggle to protect the land, air and water. Navajo Louise Benally and Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, are honored for speaking out at protests in December against the corporate profiteers, now coopting Arizona legislators, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Phoenix.

Please click *here* for the rest of the post.

A Discussion about White Men's Hostility to Black Women: where ThatOneGuy proves he's a white guy just like all the other racist-misgoynist white guys

image of a white guy is from here

A friend sent me a link to a discussion at Racism Review about white het men's racist-misogyny when it comes to deciding which women to hit on (too often in obnoxious and oppressive ways, imo). Please click on the title just below to link to that full discussion.

White Men’s Hostility to Black Women: A Deeper Look

By Brittany

That post has many comments following it, including this by some white dood naming himself "ThatOneGuy". Warning: it's fucking obnoxious.

ThatOneGuy says:

June 1, 2011 at 12:54 am

I am white man who has dated women of every ethnic group, and no Swan it wasn’t because I was on an “exotic adventure” or assuming they were “hyper-sexual”. In both cases they were black women I worked with who I knew and who had made it clear that they dated white men.

That being said what I know is that the number of black women who will date a white man is small and to get to them I have to deal with black women like you. Who see me as “WHITE” before you see me as a man, who blame me personally for any negative thing that has ever happened to any black person. Your cousin is in prison for robing a Korean store owner-> my fault. Your sister’s baby’s daddy hasn’t sent her child support EVER-> my fault again he would if he wasn’t being held down by yours truly. Your Grandma died of a heart attack-> me again I was probably feeding her poison. Skipping over the fact that most of my family were Russian miners that came over after WWI but that is irrelevant to you. What is important is remembering that I am the root of all that is evil in the universe. In fact I am so powerful that according to you lesser creatures like non-white men have to be criminals they have no choice I-ME-THIS GUY RIGHT HERE forced them into it, that is how powerful I am.

On the other hand if I date Carmen or Nhung or Yuko are they going to tell me that the current state of their brothers, cousins, and fathers is my fault? No for good or bad, and in turn I don’t blame Carmen for acts of the Catholic Church, I don’t tell Yuko that Japanese Imperialism caused much of WWII that devastated my ancestral homeland? No I don’t it wasn’t her and she had no part in it.

So no it isn’t the racism of white men against black women that keeps men like me from approaching a black women. It is the hostility that so many black women, like you, have towards anyone with a white penis that does that.

So, at that website I responded as follows:

To ThatOneGuy who acts a whole lot like so many other white guys,

As a white male, I find your comment woefully soaked and bloated with white male supremacist (sexist and racist) assumptions about how you should be treated relative to people without your (and my) race and gender privileges, position, advantages, and status in white male-dominated and ruled societies. I'll delineate a bit of what I find troubling in what you wrote.

Your apparent offence at being treated as "one of those WHITE dudes, just like all the others" (rather than as the not-so-sensitive white guy you appear to be here?), reveals you are generally and usually being seen and treated as an individual. I'd argue that this usual experience being only occasionally interrupted by exceptional, atypical experiences is the cause for you even registering this as a significant offence. Your offence rests on your socially protected right to be seen as only an individual, even while your race and gender privileges have little to do with your individuality.

Let me speak to you for a moment as a gay person: I don't experience that level of "being seen as only an individual" as a gay person. I am seen as someone who probably has too much sex (while I choose to have none, in fact), and as someone who exists to entertain white het people: evidenced in the terribly problematic hit series, Modern Family, just last night.

Every woman of color I know doesn't have the luxury of wallowing in offence of being treated as "not an individual", for to do so would render anyone experiencing so much systematic, unceasing objectification and bigotry just plain exhausted. No Black woman I know assumes she'll be treated as "just a person" or "only an individual" by any man or by anyone white. You and I--and people like us, with regard to race and gender--can see ourselves written into history as "important individuals who shaped the world", while people of color across gender are seen as obstacles to white men getting all the freedoms we want. And our capacity to want things, people, land, and "resources" that don't belong to us knows no bounds.

Women across race are only seen by white het men as things to be sexually conquered, to take care of whites and men emotionally. Het men, meanwhile, carry the "manifest destiny" and "imminent domain" myths into the bedroom and bar room, dance club, and motel and hotel room. 

Your comments miss or ignore the reality that there are people out in the world--most people, in fact--who not hardly ever (or are never) socially regarded by our über-privileged, structurally advantaged people as "only individuals". People who are not male and white are rarely-to-never presumed by us to be deserving of being seen as individuals, except on an exceptional basis. And when we regard someone--a woman of any color, or a man of color, as "an actual individual person" we expect to be patted on the back and rewarded for doing so.

At the same time that we may oh-so-generously recognise a few people of color, a few women, as "just an individual", we only ever regard white men as individuals--without exception, but privately or unconsciously know our relative status and wealth-acquisition (and ability to hoard wealth and resources) has nothing to do with individuality and everything to do with social custom and legal policy.

We white guys carry around an absurdly apolitical, socially ignorant assumption that being white and male means nothing other than that "we're [just] human". We are human, of course, but so too are we carriers of white and male supremacist assumptions, attitudes, actions that do, in fact, oppress other people. Want to check out how much that's the case, economically? See this website and take the test:

http://slaveryfootprint.org/

You and I support white and male supremacy in society in myriad ways. Please don't respond with the ubiquitous and predictable "Dude, you don't even KNOW me!" line. I've seen what you've written here and you've revealed far more about yourself than you perhaps wished.

I'm from European immigrant stock too--I'm first generation on one side of my family, and both sides of my white, arrived-poor family benefited greatly from being taken into this society as "white". My family wouldn't have made it into the middle class in one generation if they weren't received here as white. And whatever your class background is, it would be poorer if your parents or grandparents had come here being received socially and economically as not-white people.

You state, "I am white man who has dated women of every ethnic group, and no Swan it wasn’t because I was on an 'exotic adventure' or assuming they were 'hyper-sexual'", as if we should applaud you or massage your feet, or get you something cool or warm to drink. Or as if to prove that white men don't do *exactly that* most of the time. Your plea for exceptionalism is akin to the men who are offended when women on the street swiftly move to the other side when approached, as if "that man should be regarded as the only non-rapist of the bunch". Where in the world does such a keen ability to discern danger among unknown men come in handy? It comes in handy only for men who rape women but want to be perceived as non-rapists. Meanwhile, most men do jack sh-t to end rape, or, even, to call out the men who speak misogynistically about women they know and don't know.

I found your wording here especially revealing of the privileges you carry as a white person and a man:

"That being said what I know is that the number of black women who will date a white man is small and to get to them I have to deal with black women like you."

Yes, you are raised to think you have a right to "get to" anyone you want, for whatever reasons you want to have access to them. Denial of access by women offends men greatly, because our pro-rape society teaches all men to assume we can take what we want and any rejection is reason enough to insult her and further oppress all women by calling the rejecting woman the b-word, among other expletives; by beating her up, especially if she's in a "romantic" relationship; and by murdering her, especially if she has the audacity to leave his sorry abusive ass.

Let's consider who has to endure more: you, Mr. White Man, who has to be allegedly insulted and offended by being seen as WHITE by a few people you have the choice to surround yourself with interpersonally and intimately. Or women of color, who, particularly in the US, have to endure unending non-human status by whites, by men, by media, by politicians, and by most people ("individuals") who are more privileged. I know very few women of color who can afford to NOT be around whites or men. I know many white men who choose to be intimately involved only with other whites--and those who break out of that racist mold want plenty of kudos for being so open-minded. White men, socially and in workplaces, also choose to be predominantly with other men.

You choose to engage women of color from a position of privilege and power that no woman of color structurally has, relative to you, in the US. And you conveniently forget *that* when you are offended. It's surely your privilege to do so.

You seem to expect or want or need to not have the past actions of your people, who have committed all manner of terroristic or "only insulting and degrading" atrocities against girls and women of color in the US and internationally. Why, exactly, should anyone give you that pass without knowing you? Do you distinguish yourself as exceptional by demonstrating a fiercely public and private commitment to anti-sexism and anti-racism work? (And, even then, anti-racism and anti-sexism activist men are notoriously and grievously racist and misogynistic.)

If you don't distinguish yourself in those ways, why ought anyone regard you as anti-racist and anti-sexist when you take it upon yourself to approach them? Why don't you create around yourself a welcoming space and wait for women to approach you? Is it because your learned ways of being a man impel you to be the assertive initiator, socially?

White men continue to commit these horrible acts--with few to no white men opposing it publicly.  Most white men don't interrupt the other white men or the throw wrenches in the white and male supremacist machinery that keeps pressing down on the lives of people who are neither male nor white; white men benefit greatly from this lack of white-brotherly interference.

That's one typically white male supremacist aspect of your comment here: you are quick to note what's offencive to *you*, but are woefully silent on the matter of what white men do--including you, historically or presently--that warrants any individual woman of color being very (read: appropriately) leery of you and your intentions in approaching her.

As you make a worse-than-weak case for being treated as just an individual, when you grossly reinforce racism and misogyny, rattling off your scenarios of your own alleged dehumanisation in their eyes:

"Your cousin is in prison for robing a Korean store owner-> my fault. Your sister’s baby’s daddy hasn’t sent her child support EVER-> my fault again he would if he wasn’t being held down by yours truly. Your Grandma died of a heart attack-> me again I was probably feeding her poison."

Why should anyone reading what your wrote above want to make time to learn of your family's background as Russian miners that came over after WWI? Why ought such details be relevant in the face of such glaring, unrecognised oppressive bigotry and obnoxiousness? 

You go on:

"What is important is remembering that I am the root of all that is evil in the universe. In fact I am so powerful that according to you lesser creatures like non-white men have to be criminals they have no choice I-ME-THIS GUY RIGHT HERE forced them into it, that is how powerful I am."

Again with your demands to be seen as exceptional. In the US and in many other countries, structurally and institutionally--and also often enough interpersonally and intimately, white men do oppress women of all colors.

You, who don't have post-traumatic stress due to how you are mistreated daily by whites and men, get to preach from a truly arrogant and self-centered position:

"On the other hand if I date Carmen or Nhung or Yuko are they going to tell me that the current state of their brothers, cousins, and fathers is my fault? No for good or bad, and in turn I don’t blame Carmen for acts of the Catholic Church, I don’t tell Yuko that Japanese Imperialism caused much of WWII that devastated my ancestral homeland? No I don’t it wasn’t her and she had no part in it."

But European men are implicated, quite directly, in the past and in the present, with most militarised and otherwise violent conflicts around the world, either by instilling in those places our economic systems, weaponry, or by subverting and destroying their cultures with religion or cultural practices and values. To read about how this has been done historically, please read Yurugu: An African-Centered Critique of European Cultural Thought and Behavior by Dr. Marimba Ani.

There's a damn good reason why some African-descended and Indigenous people in the Americas refer to "The White Man" in such terms. There's little reason to distinguish among us, if The White Man is stealing or invading and militarily occupying your ancestral land while also attempting and, by the millions, effectively destroying the people who are not white.

You go on:

"So no it isn’t the racism of white men against black women that keeps men like me from approaching a black women. It is the hostility that so many black women, like you, have towards anyone with a white penis that does that."

As noted elsewhere in this discussion, you are quick to name reasoned, appropriate criticism or analysis as "hostility" without recognising or being responsible for the gross hostility in your own words here. How typically white and male of you, ThatOneGuy who is not so very different from all the others.

A Broch Tzu Columbus! End Columbus Day and the Rapist, Racist, Genocidal White Male Supremacist Society it Annually Rides in on

this image was found on Facebook

From Wikipedia, First Landing of Columbus on the Shores of the New World, after the painting by Discoro

What would Amerikkka be without rape, slavery, and genocide? And I don't only mean rape, slavery, and genocide from the past. I also mean what's going on presently that WHM supremacist corporate politicians and corporate media and the followers of each will not speak about even with something called "freedom of speech" and "freedom of the press".

From my 11 October 2009 ECD post:

The Rapist Savage: Christopher Columbus, First Known White Man to Organise the Sexual Slavery of Girls and Women in the Americas

At the beginning and very end of this blogpost are images that ought to be seen on Monday, 12 October, 2009 ECD. And every other day too.

I have seen a poster and t-shirt with this statement many times, but never before now with women in the image as warriors. This image is GREAT, but when will it become reality? When will this land belong once again only to the people of the Indigenous Nations of Turtle Island?:

image found here

A DEMAND TO END COLUMBUS DAY IN THE RAPIST GENOCIDAL U.S.!!!!