Update on "The Conversations Project: The Radical Inclusivity of Radical Feminism"

upper image is from here; lower image is from here 

To me an important breakthrough, I felt, in my work and that of others was the call to use the term white supremacy, over racism because racism in and of itself did not really allow for a discourse of colonization and decolonization, the recognition of the internalized racism within people of color and it was always in a sense keeping things at the level at which whiteness and white people remained at the center of the discussion.  — bell hooks

Quote, p. 68, Critical Foundations in Young Adult Literature (author: Antero Garcia)

[M]y vehicle was going to be truth: not a global, self-deluded truth, not a truth that only I knew and that I wanted other people to follow, but the truth that came from not lying. — Andrea Dworkin
Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, page 21

There is difference and there is power. And who holds the power decides the meaning of the difference. 

— June Jordan
Quote, p. 220, Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (author: Urvashi Vaid)

To the leaders and moderators of The Conversations Project:

It appears as though you disappeared a lot of my writing from the Facebook group without any direct notice or personally delivered warning that this would occur. For the record, I do not consider myself as having left the group, nor have I received any notification that I am barred. So I think appropriately, I consider myself a part of it. I'll steer clear of any presumptions, as I have been welcomed, quite recently, to continue to post there. But I feel like I'm getting mixed messages. As I think you know, from the start of my involvement, I stated that I will utilise my blog to process or expand upon things I have mentioned there. So this post is simply the latest, and is not intended to be the final analysis.

My last comment, for the record, was to share a link* as an addition to a relevant discussion within the group. This is, in fact, a five-part conversation on trans and feminist issues, which I'd entirely forgotten about. Here is the full series of conversations with Sara, which occurred in late 2010:

Part 1: https://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/11/sara-and-julian-discuss-transfeminist.html
Part 2: https://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/11/part-2-sara-and-julian-discuss.html
Part 3: https://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/12/sara-and-julian-discuss-transfeminist.html
*Part 4: https://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/12/sara-and-julian-discuss-transfeminist_03.html
Part 5: https://radicalprofeminist.blogspot.com/2010/12/sara-and-julian-discuss-transfeminist_05.html


To the readers of this blog:

At this point, I've been in the group a full three weeks. A couple of days ago I thought there was a breakthrough in finally acknowledging what that group is and isn't designed to be or prepared to do. I saw that one of the creators might move forward with radical honesty--I appreciated her so much for this indication, but that got immediately thwarted by another member.

What the group cannot as yet do is deeply interrogate key aspects of gender because triggering occurs when several topics and phrases get raised. It also can't, as yet, get far because it doesn't seem committed to looking beyond white norms except to appropriate concepts, experiences, and cultural understandings of those we whites work so diligently to destroy. Sadly, racist appropriation of things like "inclusivity" and "intersectionality" are among many colonial white norms.

As one feature of The Conversations Project, there is a series of interviews with feminists or queer theorists. Some of those have been posted. At last glance, all the experts are white. The principal authors of the project are also white. (And the most vocal members of the group are white-identified.) The project itself is tethered to work and perspectives that cannot be anything but white-centric and so it loses all possibility of radical contribution to Feminist and Queer theory, unless you think more white supremacist theory is radical. But, for whom could that be true?

Gender, there, has appeared to me to be understood as social and psychological, with political meaning as well. And also scientific, using the work of some neurobiologists to note there are not two 'discreet' genders. But that has never been claimed among radical feminists I have known for decades. The dimensions of gender not well-addressed there are the economic, racial, and patriarchally sexual.

Making room for some marginalised voices is identified as radical--and marginalised voices should certainly be heard. But bringing in usually excluded perspectives while not challenging the oppressive norms or exclusionary practices in the center of the room is also designated as radical. I have disagreed.

To date, the group has refused so much of the depth and dimension of Radical Feminist herstory, such as the more radical theories and activist efforts by white women and women of color; it has created an unfortunately narrow breadth of inquiry, even within an already stifling white discourse. An interview with Catharine A. MacKinnon avoided addressing the core issues in MacKinnon's work, such as the maintenance of sex inequality through harassment, degradation, and speech acts. All of Andrea Dworkin's insights on battery and rape, on occupation and subordination, have been ignored.

So it shouldn't come as any surprise that if a group doesn't, together, welcome dealing substantively with such sharp white activists' work, the work of brilliant women of color would be completely occluded. Beyond marginalised. Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Gloria Anzaldúa, bell hooks, Winona LaDuke, Patricia Hill Collins, Vandana Shiva--all radically feminist writers of theory and art, practitioners of activism, have not been welcomed and are viewed as off topic, too tangential in focus. Have we not heard precisely this excuse during half a century of feminist discourse--and for many centuries?

The Facebook group pays lots of liberal lip service, however sincerely, to the problem of racism and the value of women of color. But the group, as a whole, or through its leadership, will not acknowledge the degree to which it is a white supremacist space. (If you have not as yet, I invite you to read the first quote that introduces this post.) If anyone from that group, or beyond it, wants more detail, just ask, in a comment here, and I'll explicate several points of critique.

Sadly for me, and as mentioned above, it appears someone there has already removed chunks of those critiques, while giving me no notice of that occurring and no opportunity to collect my work before deletion. This speaks to a problem with ethics and process. And smacks of passive-aggressive censure. I welcome whoever did it to own up to that, in a blog comment, or to otherwise explain their reasoning below. They have endeavored to communicate clearly in the past, so I hold out hope for this occurring here in this case.

My perseverance in seeking to address several limitations within the group was seen as distracting from a stated purpose. But to even believe such a direction amounts to a distraction, means one is willfully committed to a lack of knowledge about gender politics in colonial patriarchies. I'm arguing that not even the most privileged of us can afford to ignore how white manhood and capitalism combine with misogynoir and anti-Indigenism to create patriarchal rape culture. And to grasp it, those of us who are white have to learn about others and ourselves from writers like hooks and Collins. As another white member stated there, to my cheers, white people cannot lead us.

I am reminded daily of the refusal to acknowledge the meaning and force of our whiteness. The refusal was tangible there. Blatantly visible in a number of ways. But denied, which is often enough the first line of defense. (And hopefully the only line.)

In short, the group has not been radically feminist, or radically inclusive, if being either means centering voices and theories of women of color and non-binary POC. Nor has it been one that could go far or deep with its conversations. Here's one example: To ask what is patriarchal about the majority-white conflict between what is termed T--Fs and liberal trans activists, was effectively verboten. To ask which of the dynamics and practices participate in rape culture: forget it. No go. Not even a dead end: nothing paved to even get to a dead end. Partly, the reason had to do with triggering, but not by being triggered by men's violence, per se.

Fundamentally, I think it is a support and education group for a few white trans* people who are trauma survivors. I fully support traumatised people gathering in spaces where they, themselves, define and determine the parameters of their own safety. But the only trauma discussed was committed by white natal women. When the most harm you've experienced as a white person is from a few white Radical Lesbian Feminists, one could argue you've somehow managed to avoid the brunt of what patriarchy forces on people. When the harm is interpersonal to the point that the perpetrators have names (and just a few names), I'd argue we are in the realm of a kind of abuse that is not what attempts to kill most women. Most harm is structural, systemic, institutional, including the interpersonal or intimate expressions of it. To the extent the harm named there shows up in institutions, it is due to its application by white men, not white women. Or it is directly caused and controlled by men across ethnicity.

We were not discussing PTSD as arising from misogynist, institutionalised rapist violence. Or as emanating from racism alone, or from misogynoir. The forms of dissociation and denial I personally witnessed in that minority group have been raced white and were not assigned female at birth. (That is meant to be a deeply political, not an anatomical, point.)

Thus far, the group's efforts have had limited applicability to the actual world of oppression. This is partly due to mining only a few bits of some white radical feminists' work. Then combining that with liberally inclusive elements of white-dominated Queer theory. To be clear: the bits are veridical; the elements are estimable. But anti-feminism--the willed erasure of most women and the sources of their subordination and injury, ought not permeate radical pro-feminist conversations. It especially ought not delineate them.

Trayvon Martin and the on-going Genocide of Black and Brown People

image of the late Trayvon Martin is from here

I suggest we ought to understand what happened to Trayvon Martin--his murder at the hands and gun of known serial criminal son-of-a-judge* George Zimmerman (see here, and here: trigger warning for details of child sexual abuse)--through much broader lenses than those used by white male-owned corporate media.  I view such an injustice and grievous act, another loss added to the millions of others, in the context of seeing how many Black and Brown people around the world are allowed to die an unnatural death from the following:

--gross economic discrimination, violence, and terrorism,

--pollution, theft, and destruction of water systems and other natural resources,

--imperialist invasion and occupation,

--wrongful/unjust incarceration alongside serial and mass murder inside and outside the criminal justice system owned and operated by white men and supported by white women

--willful media and medical abuse, negligence, and neglect,

-- coerced and forced indebtedness and dependence on white/colonial societies,

--sexual trafficking and sexual and economic slavery,

--many other forms of well-organised and institutionalised inhumanity leading to disease, depression, and premature death

I come to the conclusion that what happened to Trayvon Martin, including the injustice his family has to endure from a white-majority jury, is neither accidental, aberrant, or anecdotal. (Not, really, that there was any doubt.)

What happened to him is what happens in many different ways to Black and Brown people globally: being targeted for harassment, assault, and death both one at a time and en masse.

If and to whatever extent Trayvon had the courage and will to fight back, it surely wasn't sufficient to save his own life or to take the life of his stalker. We can only hope Black and Brown people prevail. Chances for survival and success beyond survival would greatly and dramatically increase if whites would organise to release the institutional strangling grip of economic, social, and interpersonal murder.

*Thanks to Carolyn Gage for publicly pointing out the particular political significance of this with regard to why he's never been found guilty of anything he's done that is criminal--including messing with a cop, and more recently this murder of a youth.

May Trayvon Martin, and all the other murdered Black and Brown women, men, and children, rest in a kind of peace not socially offered or available while alive.

I close with this statement about the killer, by bell hooks:

"White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged to feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to “protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat." This is what the worship of death looks like.

- bell hooks on the Zimmerman verdict    

Yom HaShoah and The Question of Memory: Whose memory matters?

image is from here

In response to visiting the U.S. [Nazi] Holocaust Memorial Museum, white Western Jewish feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote, The Unremembered: Searching for Women at the Holocaust Memorial Museum.
 

When atrocity happens to women, men often don't know about it even while men do what it is men don't remember. When I remember what happened to the Jews of Europe in the early to middle part of the last century, I wonder how it can be that U.S. white Jews with class privilege can now so easily overlook the contemporary genocide Indigenous people in North America and beyond. I know how it can be. We say "we didn't know", the same excuse used by white gentile Germans. Utter this phrase to Jews of European descent with regard to how the Nazi Holocaust (HaShoah) could occur, to people who lost family in WWII in concentration camps, and you'll likely be met with an expression of exasperation and anger. Appropriately. When I attempt to bring the topic of white's genocide against Native Americans, I am met with a look of disbelief or incomprehension. What kind of genocide do you mean?

The kind that results in the organised, systematic destruction of a people, I might say. The kind that causes the dissolution of culture, sickness, and mass death. Is the presence of genocide only to be measured against the particularly heinous methods used by Nazis in Europe? If there are no gas chambers and ovens, but there is virulent colonialism and racism, is a genocide not occurring? 

Please see: Ward Churchill Speaks: On Colonialism as Genocide from Maximilian Forte on Vimeo.

I won't get too far into what the Israeli military is doing to Palestinian people, not because I think it unworthy of attention, but because my Jewishness is not connected to Israel. I have a homeland called New York City. Israeli Jews are not, directly, my people. I have no personal emotional or political connection to them. My people are white U.S. Americans, and U.S. Jews of every color. As a white U.S. Jew, I do have blood on my hands to the extent that the U.S. actively supports racist, murderous apartheid in Israel and the region. I oppose the oppression and destruction of Muslim Palestinians by Israeli Jews. And the ethnic and religious divides there are not so sharp as one might believe if one only consumes U.S. media. Muslims and Palestinians live in Israel. Israeli Jews and Muslims live in Palestine. Generally, though, I am far too ignorant about the particulars of the history there to have much of use to say that could be considered informed.

I haven't even read Dworkin's book, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation. I have read a review of it by Veronica A. Ouma (*here*), but some of the assertions about Dworkin's political views are inaccurate, such as stating she supported or advocated female supremacy. She most certainly, and explicitly, did not. Proof of that is here:

Biological Superiority:

The World's Most Dangerous and Deadly Idea  

Two days from now marks the eight anniversary of Andrea's unexpected death on 9 April 2005. I miss her voice in my world. She spoke against inhumanity in so many forms. There are few people who show such literary commitment to justice and liberation for women. I remember her. I remember those six million Jews destroyed in Europe from 1935-45. And the other five million killed during that time, in that place, who were not Jewish. I remember, on the 19th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide, the 800,000 Tutsis killed by Hutu extremists. I remember Indigenous Americans exterminated on this land and those who are being destroyed currently. On this day, Yom HaShoah, I remember that past and this present.

I encourage you to read this guest post: "In a Quiet Place", by Itoro

What follows was posted originally on Itoro's own blog, "Thoughts of my Mind". She has welcomed me to repost it here. And it is with gratitude to her that I do so. To link back to the post on her blog, please click *here*.

In a Quiet Place

why some people be mad at me sometimes

by Lucille Clifton

they ask me to remember

but they want me to remember

their memories

and I keep on remembering mine

This testimonial is a celebration for all the ways we survive, often unnoticed and alone in our struggling to make a difference from the many places we inhabit. This testimonial does not belong to me, it could not be written without the wisdom and knowledge of many other peoples remaining vigilant in putting our dreams of a world free of exploitation into practice. Our collective memories of the ways in which unchecked supremacy can run rampant in our practice towards one another fuel our determination to realize this dream. We often find ourselves marginalized and alone, unwelcome in radical communities with curt responses or none at all, and usually no acknowledgement of the ways in which we have been torn in these movements.    Radically telling this truth can be viewed as divisive to the movement and a “pathological” issue. This logic is an effective tool to manage dissenting voices, sanitize our lived realities and allow for treacherous interactions. Many of us have horror stories of the types of systemic disrespect and negation we have gone through.  In fighting for a more expansive politics, to openly name the ways dominant behaviors surface across many institutions and people is met with hostility. To honor our rage and pain, to use our stories as a way to salve our wounds and name the abuse is a radical endeavor. It suggests the possibility of healing and allowing ourselves to find wellness. Acknowledging pain demands a critical reflection on all the interactions that happened to get us to the point of betrayal in the first place. It also demands us to interrogate our own habits and question the role we have played in the matter. Often, this type of radical truth-telling does not happen, we end up leaving or staying in these places looking in from the margins, completely discredited. So of course, the scars are here, still swollen and bruised. Wherever do we go from here?

Hey, big woman–

with scars on the head

and scars on the heart

that never seem to heal–

I saw your light

And it was shining.

(Assata Shakur)

As someone who identifies as Black, as woman, first-generation, African, working class and energetic, I have seen how my rage has been treated as counter-productive to the movement.  I think of my own horror stories expressing the destructiveness that can come with doing this work. The most recent and painful memory. I am working as an educator within a radical teaching organization. We care about solidarity, critical thinking, understanding and liberation across difference for our common struggles, Yet, when I note the overwhelming whiteness and privilege often exercised within the organization I am either met with an eerie silence or hostility. More specifically, when I say that the movement to end class exploitation must also deal with white supremacy and assert that we (yes we, not just the ruling classes) must investigate our roles in reproducing this class system with our own internalized supremacy I suddenly become that sore on every one’s side.

 “Am I crazy? No one has said anything so maybe it’s me…”

I soon start to believe that I am the problem. Besides, there are people of color here too, who care about solidarity, critical thinking and liberation across difference. We have to care about it and love each other fiercely…right? When trying to voice my concern to this woman of color she swiftly cuts me off and says, “It’s not about a black pedagogy or white pedagogy but a class pedagogy.” End of discussion, there is no longer a conversation to be had. She does not even look me in my face, just like the rest of them. Maybe I should have said something else, maybe I missed something… I am that sore on her side. This is a woman of color, she holds a lot of respect and authority within this organization. I respect her too…is this my fault?

The refusal to not scrutinize how we practice freedom in our daily lives often leads to this type of unspoken and unrecognized pain. When these contradictions remain unchallenged, usually the most vulnerable within the organization are the one’s who experience the worst of what the organization has to offer (or refuses to offer). In other words, we become easy targets for your unspoken rage and anger to be unleashed and accepted at any moment when our mere presence calls out your particular contradiction and shortcoming. My rage speaks to the pain of the explosive silence and broken relationships that has deterred all our efforts to see us finally liberated from a larger structure of outright violence, denial and repression. I think of my sources of anger. I have had to go back and scrutinize these memories to break my own fears and silence:

●      A colleague of mine has told me that the all white teaching staff is wondering out loud if I am really serious about teaching. Constantly dealing with these students and administration is hurting my health. I have had racial slights hurled at me and most of the teachers act as if I am not there…living in this area has physically made me sick and yes I have been absent for a couple of days. I come back to hear that now the teachers are talking about whether or not I am serious about this work…never mind that my white colleague can go to a wedding for a week and not have these things wondered about him, or the quality of his work questioned…in fact, his teacher mentor wants to keep him for the next semester…

● I demand a meeting to talk about the institutional racism going on in the schools and teaching program. I go to the administration (comprised of two women of color and one white woman) they ask me questions about why I am so upset. One of the women (a woman of color) even says that when she saw me crying one day in front of my classmates she read my display of emotions as “impulsive.” She notes my silence as the primary reason the administration does not know what is going on (never mind that I told her about the “white teachers gossiping” incident a couple weeks ago) She questions why I want special treatment around race when other people in the program also have their issues. I am questioned so much that I begin to think what I am asking for is trivial. All the things I “demand” remain mostly unchanged.

● A white male student has been allowed to teach in Harlem New York. It was my understanding that no student could travel this far out for an internship. I think back to previous meetings I had when I said I wanted to work specifically with children of color. The administration told me that my wanting to teach students of color is a subjective issue.  Most of my white peers talk about wanting to do prison work, feeling that people of color need the most help and wanting to work with “vulnerable” populations. But this colleague can go teach students of color and even travel away to do so. He comes back to class saying he is having a difficult time relating to the issues he is seeing with this population. I watch the same woman who used her questions to discipline me, use her questions to help this student with his specific situation.

●  I have become completely silent in class no longer wanting to engage. I should do better and hate the fact that I feel so stuck. But still, I do have to note that two of my other colleagues are incredibly silent however no one seems to stare their way and demand and answer when the white people exclaim, “Not enough people speak up in class!…”

● I’m in a role play in a small group on intervening to stop racism. The scenario: One woman wants to cross the street because she spots an African American male walking on the sidewalk. The other friend is supposed to intervene. For the next ten minutes I watch these two white, well meaning women theorize around why they would not intervene in saying the woman wanting to cross the street is acting in a racist manner. I finally come out with my uneasiness and say this is dominant thinking. After I finally said those words I dealt with the brunt of these two “allies” insidious shame and guilt.

●      A teacher is teaching us aspiring teachers about cultural sensitivity and bias in the classroom. She is White. (This should not matter because we are in a radical setting.) In order to teach us about cultural understanding, she makes an almost entirely white class take the Chitling test. These are the things I know about the Chitling test 1). It is extremely offensive 2). It pyschologizes the black experience and 3). It should not be taken (even with well meaning adults) if we do not talk about the legacy of white supremacy. None of this is talked about. In fact, the white teachers defend why this test makes sense. One of them notes that a black sociologist created the test. I don’t give a damn if a black sociologist created this test. We are not all on the same side. Some of the students look confused, most of us say nothing, most of us do not understand the history behind this test. This is confusing. One white woman across the table from me laughs and says, “Let’s take the test!”

●      I’m working at a new teaching site. It’s a progressive school. If I want to be paid for substitute teaching I must go through a background check. I pass in the required documentation within the first two weeks of school…two months later I hear no word about my paperwork going through. I send emails to no avail. My other white male colleague who entered the site the same time I did has passed his background check. He has started subbing and is getting paid for his work. I take on the same teacher load but the situation is different. Not having my background check cleared requires a “real” substitute teacher to sit in and monitor what I am doing. By law I am not allowed to be alone with the kids. The kids wonder who is the authority figure…I teach any way. A week later I am sitting eating my lunch. The lady who is supposed to handle my paperwork comes in wanting to check in about the situation. She tells me that for some reason my documentation has not yet been passed in. She proceeds to ask me, “…so about your background check. Are you…legal?”

● The most devastating memory: A professor of color asks me in front of the all white class, “You’re black, why are you silent?” I express a tenth of the rage and anger at white supremacy and finally say I am tired. The teacher says “I knew you would say that,” and for a moment I think I have an ally. She goes on to swiftly tell me that John Brown understood what this struggle meant, and that I am doing this work for the people. It is this day when I really start to wonder if by the people she is referring to the predominantly white middle class students sitting in her classroom.

● Note to self: Document everything you can and don’t let them get you alone (unless you’re strong enough to take them on), that’s their way of coercing you into things you might not want to do. Try to have someone there as a witness to verify what they tell you in private from what they actually do when everyone is watching. My last day meeting with two of the administrative members at the end of program. I finally tell one of them that I felt chastised within the program and that there was absolutely no support offered. She asks me, “Did something deep in you change?” At this time, I do not realize how deeply patronizing and dismissive her question is.  I reply yes. The respect for her authority is still there. I still try to hold my position that there should have been some support. She goes on to tell me: “The institution is not supposed to be supportive.” This feels like the twilight zone. It also feels deceptive. This is confusing.  I was under the impression that we wanted to build community, namely with one another… I’ve seen her be supportive when she needs to be…why is she always so heavy handed with me? And what about me needs to change? And if something is wrong why can’t she at least be clear about it so I can fix it?  Has she said this same statement to any other student? This is information you do not hide, if I had known she felt this way I would have known that for all this talk about principles, it was a “pick and choose what works for me” game at best.

●  A little over a year and all’s been said and done. I must still ward off these anti-racist white women who have not shaken their case of Missy Anne syndrome. One of them wants to “touch base.” She cannot take no for an answer when I say no to meeting and hosting her. She uses her creativity to get my phone number, my partner’s phone number and persistently texts and calls. She’s found out where I work and I hear that she’s been to my workplace. With all this persistence there must be something she needs to say. When we finally meet she smiles without acknowledging anything. Not what happened back then and certainly not that her supremacy is showing now.  She still feels insufficient in her work for social justice and something about maybe buying a house. This meeting is awkward at best. I will not use my energy to soothe her guilt. People reflect the organizations and ideologies they’re coming from.  And inaction and denial is such a reactionary and tired tune. Haven’t heard from her since. You cannot force a relationship.

As I think of these memories, I wish I had been resolute in knowing that these people were very much tied to their positions of power and dominance.  Under such an abusive gaze, where there was much more going on than this little story can touch, I celebrate that I did not give in to grief.

Finding the language to analyze these habits becomes a necessary task when the words of radical thought is so readily available, while in the same hand, we feel the constant jerking of an elbow hurting our sides. Like everything, there is no pure place to work from. Social justice work is also rife with historical contradiction and struggle. Within a capitalist structure, it has become professionalized. If you play your cards right, you can make your meal ticket off of “helping” people, and even your feelings of wanting to “do good” can be used to buttress your career. So please be sure, this is not a compartmentalized race story. The way things played out politically was steeped in the protection of white supremacy and tokenized positions of status for a few people of color.  These terror stories should alert us to the types of spaces we inhabit within the overall class hierarchy when there are no built in structures for us to critically reflect and change these contradictions as a collective. When we look at how our right to lead our own movements, to teach in our communities, to have our ideas heard and published, and to safely work, is constantly thwarted by this type of hidden supremacy, we cannot be so naïve as to not connect these structural behaviors to our economic options.  If we care about movement building we must challenge the institutional silence that erases and shames us while these injustices occur in the space and cracks of our liberation work.

Where does the pain go/when the pain goes away?

Audre Lorde

Women of color, in a quiet place, come together to talk about the ways in which we have been hurt. We name the things we have had to go without; from adequate health care to employment discrimination to worrying if we’ll be the one picked up on the street when walking home at night from the train station. We talk about our struggles and dreams. We choose to use rage as insight to continue. We are not fodder for the “cause.” We are here. There is much to fight for and no time to waste.

Without the love of my sister-friends I would not have made it. They built me up to be a warrior and tore down those sinking doubts and feelings I had. Their stories put steel in my spine and resolve in my throat. They massaged that crackle in my voice that had internalized blame and doubt. They were committed to practicing love as a principle.  They were confident in knowing that we should not be the ones to always receive the brunt of contempt, to be the ones who must be taught harsh lessons so we can really internalize how dreadful this system is, for fear that we become too “coddled.”  Mutual caretaking and intimacy is part and parcel of our survival. To toughen ourselves does not mean we must be cruel to one another. To survive does not have to mean that we allow ourselves to be tokenized to call rank on one another, that we give in to the values of this system and see each other as an opportunity for individual benefits. Through their words and commitment to heal what had been scarred I was made whole.

Constant conversations with sister-friends who knew what I was going through was my healing balm. Whenever we could get together, we would develop strategies to protect ourselves from the daily blows and assess how far we needed to go with our particular struggles. One sister-friend would write very detailed and thought out letters that helped develop my analysis when I needed words to name behaviors beyond feelings. In one tough situation she wrote:

In many ways being in this situation has helped me to polish my analysis, and understand more broadly what boundaries i must establish.  i am able to also see more clearly my own internalized oppression and how this manifests in my comments/behaviors, etc. In addition, i can also see how my knowledge and analysis is quite powerful and if not used carefully can be destructive towards my allies as well as others who do not hold my same opinion.  I am very glad to have gone through the process of conflict transformation.  for though i am a big critic, i learned much about myself and my capacity to try to bring understanding and solidarity in situations like this, without negotiating my fundamental values. i really don’t think i will be able to work with this group of people, but i will continue to support their efforts for social justice, as i will others.  the white privilege is present in every work, gesture, and suggestion.  it is much to much and will take to much of my energy which is continuously being challenged by those who are really in power.  but at least there i am visible…..very visible. i will be writing soon, with details, attaching emails, and recording the negligence of some of our colleagues, who just happen to be people in positions of power and decision making. i never thought these groups were perfect, for i am also not.  but, i was not expecting to have to put up with so much rejection and dominance. this is absolute nonsense coming from such an organization. let’s stay positive, let’s not dismiss anyone regardless of their positions, left, right, moderate, even fundamentalist. let’s try not to do what they do.

And I must shift the eye towards myself. I fed into the supremacy and hatred for another woman of color who I consider a dear sister friend. I should have raised my voice when her anger was being laughed away in front of my peers. I did not intervene when another woman of color said that she would not respond to this woman’s anger. Never mind that she was a professor saying such a dangerous statement to two students of color.

The “angry” woman in question was just “easily pissoffable.” That day, I did nothing to earn my title as an educator truly wanting to see a just world. I was too afraid to claim a position that brought humanity to my friend;  I chose to stay comfortable. I should have said it would be more productive to analyze the situation than to individualize her anger as an unwarranted abnormality. Or say that we have become all too accustomed at discrediting each other when the other is not there and this is something to be pissed off about.   I did not use that moment as an opportunity to speak to the larger structure of the organization and our serious issues around not explaining our choices, ignoring one another, and justifying our positions as the only fact that can exist. I could have even gone on about how we explain away brutal ego-tripping gossip as “analysis.” My friend’s anger was justified and should have been taken seriously. I did not have to contribute to the cruelty of that situation. When I look back, there are many could-a, should-a, would-a’s I wish I had claimed as moments for clarity.

I am sure that there are stories about my shortcomings that has done an incredible amount of damage, and I have to hear them if I am committed to sharpening my analysis, healing and creating solutions that restore dignity.

Too many of our stories are fraught with betrayal, distortion and violence in struggling to reach a place of equality. What type of hard and difficult work are we doing to ensure that we are creating the conditions for the massive change we want to see? Are there structures where we can all be clear about the choices we make? Do we consent to the targeting of our peers? Is our work restoring our dignity? The struggle continues. In my new place of struggle I knew what mistakes I did not want to continue…this knowing is liberating and involves much risk.

It took me a while to own that burning part of myself, the part that could spit fire and the part that could honor my resistance. Being around such strong women made me want to own that power and continue to struggle. There are so many peoples we do this work for, who have given much more than I can imagine and suffered greater losses. I am still here. To give in to my fear is a slow death at best. There is much too live for.  I remember a time when I wrote an email about the privilege and dominance within the program, how it hindered our goals. There was no response from my peers and I began to wonder if there would be a punishment for my thoughts. My sister-friend was able to salve my wound with her final words:

“And yes, I noticed no responses. As we know this is a strategic move of privilege and hegemony…to deny the existence of our thoughts, ideas, and creativity. Oh, but they heard loud and clear…do not doubt this my friend. Keep speaking, for if we don’t we will lose our humanity and dignity.  i know what it feels like when we feel we have spoken to much. it’s really okay. Breathe and know it is okay.   gather your thoughts, honor your life and your way, give people a chance to take it in….you will know when and how to continue. but never, never, be silent for too long…remember that what we say is deep, much to deep for others to sometimes handle.  but remember we have handled even more and have survived and become better women because of it.  don’t let guilt or shame stop you….those are the masters tools….do away with them.”

[The website this is from is: http://thoughtsofmymind-itoro.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-quiet-place.html ]

Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, and David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, are Conservative White Het Male Supremacists

photo of Boris Johnson and David Cameron is from here

Violence erupting among young poor Black men in London is a necessary response to all the violence against the Black community in England, committed by the capitalists, media, politicians, economic theorists, and military.

Anyone who argues otherwise is perpetuating lethal anti-Black activism in the form of well-organised systems of racist oppression and human destruction.

When will the racist thugs among the white het male-dominated police forces, white het male-dominated political leaders, WHM supremacist media (including that owned and operated by Rupert Murdoch), be held to account for the violence against Black people that they routinely and commonly commit?

Globalised Western corporate capitalism has produced unprecedented horrific poverty among people of color, grotesquely unjust and unearned wealth among whites, and the disparity between the two groups necessitates violence against the WHM supremacist State. Nothing short of violent retaliation will get anyone's attention. Nothing short of violent retaliation will get the media's attention. That violence by the poor will always be seen as more dangerous than the on-going violence of the white rich against the poor is something that is a fact of life in a white supremacist nation-state.

We see the same thing in the US and in every other country where male supremacy, white supremacy, and corporate capitalism are ideologically and institutionally fused to one another in the behavior and values of white wealthy mass murderers of the poor. We must keep in mind that multiracial regions globally, regionally, and in so many places locally where people of color live with (or near) whites, “the poor” are always disproportionately children and women of color. The poor may also be men of color, white women, and white men and children. But the poverty of whites is a by-product of racist/misogynist corporate capitalism: it is very specifically and deliberately designed to commit genocide and gynocide without media and elected politicians ever bothering to notice. 

A Whiter Shade of Male: on naming white and male supremacy when we see or commit it

I recoimage of book cover is from here

Given that I recommend reading the above book after reading in it, that probably means I ought to read it from cover to cover.  I hope to do that one day.

First up:
To the white women (and all people) who think I'm a troll on Facebook: please unfriend me on Facebook immediately. I'd unfriend you if I knew who you were, and have done so with two white women who have told me they think I'm a troll. I'm working on being sure my behavior is not particularly trollish. But what is trollish to some isn't trollish to others. For example, me calling out white women's racism and white supremacist practices on Facebook is considered to be a sure sign I'm a troll to some white women, but not to others. I determine this by the face that it has only been since posting on Facebook about white women's white supremacy that the accusation of being a troll has surfaced.

Me calling out white and male supremacy will be seen and experienced as offensive, harmful, misandrist, misogynist, and otherwise problematic by many white people. I accept that's their experience. And I conclude the resistance to being called out as racist, anti-Semitic, is effectively, if not also intentionally, racist, anti-Semitic, and white supremacist. Including when I'm called out as being white supremacist. I hope my friends and colleagues will call it out when it happens.

Second up:
This is what I've learned from white radical feminists and radical feminists of color: the distinctions between being sexist, misogynist, and male supremacist are ones that are terribly important for males to tease out, often determining ourselves to be possibly the former, but never the latter two.

This is what I've learned from white Lesbian activists: the distinctions between being pro-trans, heterosexist, and anti-Lesbian are ones that are terribly important to those of us who are not Lesbian. But from the experience and perspective of Lesbian women who endure discrimination, hostility, and violence from men, trans activists, and het women, the distinctions aren't that important.

Here's what I've learned from women of color: the distinctions between being racist, sexist, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous, anti-Brown, anti-Asian, a white "asiaphile", a white consumer of Indian artifacts, a genocidalist, a misogynist, and a white or male supremacist are terribly important for us whites to split as if hairs, but they are not necessarily so different, experientially, if one is not white.

I know women of color who do detail the differences between being racist and being a white supremacist. And I know women of color who do not. Most women of color I know do not. And I'm someone who also does not. Perhaps because I'm a Jew.

Here's what I experience as a gay male and a Jew: the distinctions non-gay men and het women make about not being homophobic, being anti-gay, being heterosexist, and being a het supremacist aren't all that meaningful to me. And the same with being someone who is kind of prejudiced about the Jews, or anti-Semitic, or white supremacist.

Structural, institutional, interpersonal privilege and entitlement means that we protect our positions of power, in part by declaring that anyone who isn't us who notices we have them must be a bigot and a very rude and hurtful individual. And it means we, not the oppressed, get to determine how racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, anti-Lesbian, anti-gay, male supremacist, heterosexist, and white supremacist we are.

This is my experience:

White class-privileged trans activists are anti-Lesbian, but being anti-Lesbian isn't a concern; being transphobic is. If they are radical, they'll own their anti-Lesbian values and practices. If they're liberal they won't.

White women and white men are racist and white supremacist. But white folks are only concerned with not being termed as either, not with whether or not, or how they are both. If they're radical they'll own their structural white supremacist ways. If they're liberal they won't. If they're conservative they're likely proud of being white supremacist and racist too.

Men of color and white men are sexist and male supremacist. But men defend against being named as either by anyone who isn't a man. If men want to identify as a misogynist, well, then they can and do and often feel entirely proud about it. But if a woman names a man a misogynist, well, he's not so happy about that. If they're radical they'll own that they are always potentially and structurally misogynistic, sexist, and male supremacist. If they're liberal they won't. If they're conservative they're likely proud of being all of those things.

Het folks along the gender hierarchy are heterosexist, anti-Lesbian, anti-gay, lesbophobic, and homophobic. If they're radical they'll own and be responsible with their privileges and power. If they're liberal they will appear to be, but won't be in ways that are meaningful to Lesbian, gay, and other queer people.

Rich folks are classist. They may want to pretend they are not, or they may want to show off how classist they are. If they are radical, they'll be responsible and accountable for what they do with their wealth and class privileges and entitlements. If they're conservative and liberal they'll say how much rich people should contribute to causes which help the poor poor, but not, for example, by closing loop-holes that unjustly benefit the very rich, by ending inheritance laws, or by radically redistributing wealth in a classist, capitalist society.

The whites are defensive about being called a white supremacist, but are not encouraged or pleased if men are defensive about being called a male supremacist. Hets are defensive about being lesbophobic and homophobic, and if they're men they don't want to be seen or called male supremacist or misogynist or sexist either.

I hope you see the patterns. If you're privileged in some way, I hope you break them. I work at it and it's not easy. But it is worthwhile. And it is necessary if I am to be an ally to those I oppress.

Third up:
Other related curiosities:

Some white feminists insist on me calling myself a man even though I identify, perhaps liberally, as intergender. I find their challenge entirely understandable: I have gay male power and privileges and entitlements. But white women I know, Lesbian and not, won't generally or usually identify themselves as white and will disappear their race and deny their racism in the ways they do identify themselves (such as, for example, "radical feminist") and behave (for example, being part of a white supremacist feminist organisation but not ever naming it as such or challenging its white supremacy). They won't say they are white supremacists even when they are. And they maintain the right to name themselves and not be named by people who are not white even while it is people who aren't white who are in a far clearer position--a subordinated one--to know white supremacy when it's right in front of you. Go figure that white folks along the gender hierarchy maintain this entitlement, privilege, power, and control.

I hope you see the patterns. Most of us, out of a need to believe we are uncomplicatedly "good",  don't want to be told we're an oppressor, unless we're so powerful we take pride in it. The rest of us want to have our delusions about ourselves supported, and our egos stroked. And if we are called a white supremacy, anti-Lesbian, or a male supremacist, we are insulted and believe this pain of insult is worse than any pain on Earth.

Fourth up, and last but not least:
My prayers today are with the tens of thousands of women struggling for survival in East Africa. The corporate press's concerns are with what a madman in Norway did to about a hundred white people. My heart goes out to the people who lost loved ones in Norway, and across Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya. We may learn the names and backgrounds of some of the people who died recently in Norway. We will be led to believe that the East African women who are homeless, on foot with families, searching for safety, food, and water, are not individuals with particular interests or even names. What the media also will not discuss is the role of white European het men in the political, economic, and social unrest and devastation in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and in many places in Europe as well, particularly, in the East, the British, the Germans, and the Italians. (See, for example, *here*, on the colonial history of Kenya.)

I think the values, attitudes, and behaviors are disgustingly white supremacist and genocidal and gynocidal, particularly as they promote the media telling more intimately human stories about harm done to white people than to Black people.

Living Under The Same Roof: On The Waltons, Familiarity, and Awareness of Whiteness

image is from here

I've been a fan of The Waltons TV series since it began airing in the early 1970s when I was just a kid. It ran for nine seasons and it has been re-airing, in sequence, over the last many years, on various cable networks. Currently it's on Hallmark Channel which is showing three episodes a day, Monday through Friday.

Originally it aired weekly. So in a month I'd see about four programs. These days I can see a whole season of shows in about two weeks! This is an entirely different way to take in the program and allows me to see things that I'd missed when my viewing of the program and tracking of the on-going plot lines was spaced out. I can now notice patterns of speaking, expressions each character says that eluded me back in the day; being a kid and adolescent also meant I was seeing through entirely different lenses, developmentally. The youngest girl, Elizabeth, is currently grown up into a young adult in the episodes airing this week. One of the people in her many-sibling'ed family is her next older sibling, a brother named Jim-Bob. When he is about to do something really unwise, like fail a science test so he doesn't have to be valedictorian of his high school graduating class because he's afraid of being a leader, she's there to tell him she's ashamed of him. That assessment from his little sister is enough to get him back on track, to push through inner obstacles to his own success or overcome impulses to be grossly irresponsible.

Elizabeth is the moral center of the family which has lost its grandparents and parents as key characters. I hadn't realised this when I originally watched the show in the '70s.

There's a lot I didn't track, I'm realising. Just as the hue of the floral-patterned fabric on the stuffed living room chair and how it is similar to but not the same as the pinker floral pattern of the fabric on the couch. I can see with greater regularity which photos adorn the mantelpiece. I can see what clothes they tend to wear.

As you probably know, you REALLY get to know someone when you spend a lot of time with them, in person. Especially living under the same roof.

“The same roof”, for me right now, is functioning as a kind of metaphor for familiarity among humans.

I grew up around mostly white people. I had opportunities to be around people who were Black but in the place where African Americans and whites co-existed, they didn't get to know each other well. Cultural and class differences, as well as the prevailing antagonistic force of white supremacy, kept Black students at my junior high school separate from most whites. Life was more comfortable that way, I imagine, for the students of color. It was surely more comfortable for the whites, who so clearly preferred to congregate only amongst themselves. This need was projected onto African Americans by the white students, and this has become a stereotype—not of whites, but of groups of people of color of the same ethnicity: “they” tend to “keep to themselves”. And whites don't?

My whole life, through to this day at this hour, I've watched whites keep to themselves while not exactly having the awareness that whites do this more often than other racial groups. I've watched whites be open to getting to know people of color but not under the same roof—not with any great degree of familiarity and bonding. There have been exceptions: one of my female white family members married a man who is Latino. He's the only Latina/Latino person in my family. The white family welcomes him, but not without noticing that he's not “like us”. They do their best to put aside his difference, which usually means they distort and misunderstand what that difference is. The difference, primarily, is one of political location. They are hard-working poor white folks; he's a hard-working man without white privilege. They don't see his difference to them in those terms at all.

Yesterday on The Waltons, there was an episode I didn't remember seeing when it first aired. I'm wondering if I saw it but couldn't let in what it was dealing with. I would have been living with white Christian family then, under the same roof, and the episode was about Jason's girlfriend, Toni, and her being Jewish. The family took this news strangely—making Toni feel strange about being a Jew. Their behavior didn't make them feel strange about being Baptist.

The episode dealt really well with that form of anti-Semitism. I was intimately aware of that level of it as I've gotten exactly the same form from my Christian family members. As I think I've told you before here, I'm the only gay male and the only Jew in my white Christian-majority, white Christian-dominant family. And those in my family who identify as Christian are not “secular” about it. They believe they are “right” about who god is. They believe everyone needs Jesus in their lives—their Jesus, that is; not the real Jesus.

When the Walton siblings acted strangely, Toni felt estranged from the family she was growing to love. Jason felt like they were coming between him and his new love. But one of his brothers, Ben, felt like she was coming between Jason and his family. Ben was the one to behave in ways that came across as most anti-Semitic, although to him it was only fear of losing his brother. What his behavior was to Toni and Jason was anti-Jewish because it made Toni feel like an invading outsider, and it showed no capacity to understand his own behavior as problematic and insulting to her.

I've been around Christian whites a lot in my life—sometimes living under the same roof as them. When I talk about them to other Jews—of any color—what I find is that we can relate to all the many ways W.C.'s have of making Jews feel strange or like we're outsiders invading their precious spiritual-moral terrain. They tend to view themselves as superior, although not necessarily out loud in so many words. It's implicit in most of what they do when encountering someone who isn't Christian but who is identified or affiliated with another religion.

In the last several years, most of my closest friends have not been white or actively Christian. One woman is Jewish; most of the people I know well were raised in homes that were Christian-identified but the women don't identify with Christianity; they, like me, find it to be oppressively heterosexist and misogynistic or otherwise insulting to their humanity.

I don't view Christianity one way. The ways my family members practice it, for example, is very different than how my white feminist lesbian mentor practiced it. There was almost no resemblance at all. They were of different denominations, but the whole attitude about Christianity was radically different. My family needs it—they need it to be something for them, to stabilise their lives. My mentor didn't need it; she embraced it because it held some meaning for her. She brought her wisdom to her faith; my family chooses to believe any wisdom they have comes from Jesus, not from their own mind or the world itself. They worship a male god who lives in the sky; my feminist mentor did not. In fact, she prayed to and honored The Goddess, or Goddesses. My family wouldn't regard her as Christian at all, for that and many other reasons.

What has taken me a long time to see is how whiteness works, in part because I never got enough self-awareness to see how it was operating in my own behavior. Being Jewish and white has been both an opportunity and obstacle to seeing how my own white actions function to protect the power I hold for being white—power that is held for me institutionally, made available when I wish to utilise it.

What I find is that if you grow to know someone or a situation intimately, the details of how it operates become clearer than if you keep that reality at arm's length, or check in with it only every now and then. But intimacy without the ability to analyse what you're experiencing can leave you like a fish in water—utterly unable to describe what wet feels like.

James Huff, an MRA who has not been in contact with me for a couple of weeks now, had written to me his observations about Black and Brown people in the U.S. I haven't published them here because I view them as domineering and dehumanising. He thinks his views are accurate and appropriate. He thinks Black and Brown people can be summarised in ways he'd find unacceptable and bigoted if anyone did the same to his people. That's part of his domineering power: to think he gets to contain people in his observations without being willing to allow others to do the same to him and his.

If the problem were being misunderstood, that'd be one thing. But if the misunderstandings and mischaracterisations are part of an overall program to keep people down, economically and politically beneath others, that's something else that must be radically changed. To deny that's the function of the distortions is to engage in one form of protectionism of the system of oppressive harm that folks on top get to deny. White men deny it by not being able to describe what it means to be white and men, in the political and structural senses of those terms.

What I see now more clearly is that one of the ways white people along the hierarchy of gender do to keep power in whites' hands is to pretend their whiteness has no political meaning or social substance. One of the places I've seen this is at a blog called Rad Fem Hub.

Another time, I may post more about the ways they do that. What they do is exactly what white men do, although as they are women they don't do it coming from the same place as the men. But what they do is classic in revealing how white privilege and entitlements work to keep power invisible exactly at the same time it is being exercised in racist ways. I've been hoping white women would call them out, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon, as whiteness is a very strong political bond few whites want to break.