Tim Wise on White Privilege

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Assumptions I encounter among white folks like me

1. We know best. When we fight for justice, for, say, animal rights, we are quick to condemn those other human cultures (you know, the ones we have colonized and are exploiting and destroying) because they, allegedly, "don't get it" that animals are not inferior to us. Never mind that this view doesn't inhere in Western Philosophy, in our Civilizations at all. Our religions, laws, and customs place men above women, (some) humans above animals, (some) men above the Earth, as a ruler, as a dominator. Never mind that most white folks, disproportionately men, are or have been barbarians and savages (currently often by proxy). Never mind that any notions of animals being like us, not being inferior, being spirited and sentient, comes from the cultures we oppress, not from our own.

2. We behave, without acknowledging it as reprehensible and wrong, as if white folks were adults, and people of color are children. We will actually argue (not in so many words, necessarily) that because some people of color participate in the systems which disproportionately harm them and benefit us, that they are not equipped to lead a struggle against oppression.

3. We actually believe that because not all Indigenous cultures were/are [fill in the blank: respectful of women, respectful of animals, peaceful, sustainable] that we ought to decide who owns the land, as if it is ethically ours to begin with. (It isn't: we stole it, and ought to give it back "without reservation.")

4. We think we are the experts on everything that isn't about us, while being profoundly ignorant about how and what we do that is so harmful and oppressive to others. We call our oppression of others "good", "moral", and "right".

5. We don't think we are raced: we actually believe that "those people" are a race of some kind, and we are, well, just people. We refuse to acknowledge that in any social space, we are white supremacists. Whether we behave like white supremacists has a lot to do with what we recognize in ourselves as racist actions. There are exceptions to this belief: white liberals think we are white, but that race should just be invisible, meaning we should all act like white people. White Nationalists do believe in a white race, and that it is in danger, or must be "pure" as if that was ever the case, or as if creating "purity" involves anything other than bigotry and violence against people of color. White Nationalists, the ones I've heard speak out, believe that race is natural, inevitable, not political and cultural. White Nationalists believe in genocide against non-white people, even if they don't promote it publicly. Such white folks, it may be concluded, aim to be purely evil.

6. We argue there is such as thing as "reverse racism" and reverse ethnic bigotry. We carry around a ridiculous belief that we either have been living in, do live in, or will soon be living in, an Indigenist Supremacist, Asian Supremacist, Latina/o Supremacist, Arab Supremacist, Jewish Supremacist, Muslim Supremacist, or Black Supremacist society. Never mind who still controls every political institution and economy in this country and other white-dominated countries. (The answer is white Christian men.)

The Twentieth Anniversary: Tracy Chapman, Talkin' Bout a Revolution

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What does "Radical" mean here?

image of book cover is from Powell's Books, here

I am thinking now about Winona LaDuke's comments in a book which originally came out in 1998, called Talking About A Revolution: Interviews. She mentions how "radical" the Bush policies have been: those of GHW, at the time that book came out; who knew we'd look back on GHW as the lesser of two evil Bushes. LaDuke discusses how she's a conservative, not the white kind. By this she means she's into honoring and conserving the Earth, not objectifying it and wasting it away, conserving Native/Indigenous language, culture, and, societies, and not continuing the genocide that the US government has been practicing for the last 150 plus years, in the hopes of "finally" perfecting it.

The dominant culture's radical policies have all been advocated or endorsed by all them good ol' whiteboy presidents ["whiteboy" here is a political term, not a biological category of humans: it is not synonymous with "humans who are pale, male, and young"]. Each and every one of 'em presidents of the US of A, has put in place or maintained policies and practices that are a combination of the following: pro-slavery, pro-white supremacy, pro-male supremacy, pro-industrial civilization, pro-post-industrial civilization, pro-urbanization/suburbanization, and/or pro-agribusiness. This is all a fancy way of saying that the themes in U.S. presidential ethics are inhumane and pro-destruction, radically, to the root. The whiteboy leaders have not maintained these dehumanising and death-loving practices all by themselves, but they have done so with considerable power and influence, regionally and globally. The trajectory of this course of action leads to only one thing: the callous disregard and destruction of all spiritual/material being on/around Earth: water, air, rock, plant, insect, animal, and human, with some nifty perks for rich white folks, especially rich heterosexual white men, on route to hell.

One could also take her mention of "radical" to mean those presidential policies are extreme.

"Radical" is used, often enough, as a synonym for "extreme" or "extremist".

What is "extreme" and harmful to the root, following up on LaDuke's comments, is rape, racism, heterosexism, and ecocide. It don't get much more "extreme" than charting a one-way course to destruction of the Earth and its inhabitants, some of whom think "we own the place." (That would be, disproportionately and overwhelmingly, white Corporate-Christian publicly heterosexual men, and the followers of them.) Pro-corporate Christian whiteboys are radicals, extremists, pure and simple.

But when I use the term, here, what I mean is this: a profeminist who is open to being challenged to the root of any issue and discussing any issue that serves the aim of ending CRAP (corporate, racist, atrocious patriarchies); a profeminist who thinks white supremacy and male supremacy are inextricably linked, and that those men folks and/or white folks who claim otherwise don't understand what their manhood-behavior or white-behavior means and does to people who are gender- and race-oppressed; a profeminist who thinks ecocide and genocide are intricately related, and no less (or more) harmful and atrocious than patriarchal crimes against humanity; a profeminist who doesn't assume that everything harmful can be reduced to or seen as originating from "sin", personal history, social psychology, capitalism, patriarchy, science, God, the Left, or the Right. Not that the Right is right: it's ethically, morally, and politically wrong alright.

Radical here also means "not [white male supremacist] liberal". NOT liberal: not viewing the world, people, social and environmental issues as primarily problems of the individual mind or heart solvable through "better" philosophical ideas, or more empathic communication, or by being more loving. I'm not against developing new theories, new ways of relating, or embracing dying ways of doing things that were better than the way we do them now. I'm saying that the source, the central force of what we experience, collectively--all of us sentient beings--does not find its motor in an individual's childhood; it is not a consequence of of unintelligent thinking, poor planning, laziness, tough luck, innate inferiority, or "feeling like a victim".

Radical here, means that promoters, profiteers, and enforcers of liberal society cannot adequately explain or efficiently end rape. A radical profeminist perspective doesn't sit with occasional discomfort believing "rape happens to some women, unfortunately, so too bad for them." It doesn't assume those who have been and are traumatised and degraded "were in the wrong place at the wrong time". It doesn't displace the responsibility for the violent act on the one who was harmed by saying "she should have known better than to go out with a guy like that." It means rape is understood as part of a larger system of interpersonal and institutionalized terrorism, violation, and social subordination of women by men, in service to men's greater domination over and control of women as a class. A radical profeminist view sees that those of us in North America live inside a network of interlocking systems which men control and own, not women; whites control and own, not people of color; that the rich control and own, not the poor. A radical perspective on rape means one looks at it in terms of both race and gender politics, among other issues, not just gender politics, because rape is a raced act as well as a gendered one, largely perpetrated here by white men against women of all ethnicities.

Radical means I don't accept that "race" or "sexuality" or "desire" are either "natural and inevitable" or "biologically driven" in the f*cked up dualistic sense in which many people--often white academic men who call themselves scholars--toss those terms around. Nature/nurture and biological/social are made up binaries. The world don't work that way, in binaries. There's gray in them there black and white understandings of reality, and colors too.

Please read Yurugu for a much more thorough and deep understanding of this.

Radical means open to new and other understandings, to new and other perspectives, to new and other awareness; it means valuing, through practice, self-examination and self-critique. White Men's Conservatism and White Men's Liberalism are closed systems of thought. The champions of these points of view deny that they have any the boundaries, any limits, any misunderstanding. The most statused advoates of white Conservatism and white Liberalism are ideologues who refuse to acknowledge, identify, or name the problems in their perspectives, or that they are operating out of a perspective. Radicalism as a social-political perspective, here means not closed. It means acting without the assumption that "people like me" know it all. Radicalism means it is understood that no one view is correct, but when manifested as actions, some are more oppressive and deadly than others.

And "a radical", the noun, not "radical", the adjective, means that if one is also profeminist, one is an activist, not a passivist. It means one is engaged in a daily practice of resistance and struggle toward transformation, alone or in groups or community, to stop rape, end racism, and halt ecocide.

So that's what I mean by the word here on this blog, and that's why it appears before the term "profeminist".

And I have great respect for Indigenist and non-Western perspectives which see the U.S. presidents and U.S. CEOs of globalizing corporations as "radical" and "extremist."

Kyle Payne, short hair, and a lack of self-loathing

Someone who has done a fantastic job of keeping a lot of us updated on the "Kyle Payne" sexual assault case, is the operator of the blog, Eleanor's Trousers. So I want to publicly thank her for all her work. I have found it to be thoughtful, incisive, and invaluable in tracking what has been going on.

There was one paragraph in her last post on K.P. that troubled me. It was troubling because, from what I know about rape and other assault, it missed the mark on a couple of potentially related matters: Kyle's short haircut and its relationship to him being a self-loathing person.

Obviously, I can have no idea about why K.P. keeps his hair the way he does, and I cannot know to what degrees he loves or loathes himself. But I can speak beyond K.P., to "Standard Operating Procedure" regarding repeat offender rapists. And I don't know if K.P. is one of those. I just know he sexually assaulted a woman, and that since he's been caught, he has expressed much more concern about himself, detailing the consequences on him, than he has on the consequences of his actions on the woman he assaulted. And, for me, that is grossly antifeminist and antiwoman, which is to say, inhumane.

E.E. wrote:

While the change in hairstyles could be a simple result of the change of seasons, I couldn't help but think about the women who, after suffering from an assault or incidents of domestic violence, pull out their own hair and eyebrows. From there my thoughts drifted to the primarily young women who take up the practice of cutting themselves. Is it possible that Payne could be that self-loathing? You wouldn't know it from reading his blog or watching his videos.

My response to the above is this:

I don't think that's it. Honestly. I have known women who pull out their hair, carry great shame about it, and generally don't want to talk about it with anyone. No men that I know of have been compulsive hair-pullers(to my knowledge).

A man, especially a very privileged white man, who sexually assaults a woman and gets his hair cut, well, that's well within S.O.P. for assaulters. I see this as a year-round phenomenon, not one related to it being summer or winter. I'm not critical of E.E.'s thought process per se; I can relate very much to the way her mind works--one thought leading to various associations, and then on to others.

I guess, using that same process, I am speaking out about where my mind goes when I hear about men who have sexually preyed on a woman or women, who also change their hairstyles. I have seen many TV programs (mostly the evening news) that show one photo of a wanted man (not necessarily, and usually not, a rapist) followed by the mugshot when he's caught. (And we know most sexual assaulters of girls and women are not caught.)

What strikes me again and again is this: men cutting off our hair, or growing it out, or growing a moustache, or cutting it off, or doing the same with a beard, or changing appearance in any number of other ways, such as dying one's hair, gaining or losing weight, wearing unusual clothes (for the particular man), affecting a different accent or speech pattern, adding or removing a scar, moving to another part of the country, etc, is, for me, unambiguously a strategy for single-time offenders (or re-offenders) to more readily "get away" with committing more crimes against (too often women's) humanity. If Kyle grows out and dyes his hair, and grows in and dyes facial hair, he can appear very different from the photo that has made the rounds online, one of himself that he originally posted; in white lingo, that image is of a man who is "clean cut." This is one way to have status and cred among, for example, potential employers, in the racist/classist society I live in.

Kyle's "clean cut" look would work in his favor both in terms of him being placed in the position of RA, and in the lighter level of sentencing he got, regarding time in jail (not prison). In fact, I think it is worth noting what Kyle Payne chooses to look like in the near future, once he is released from jail, especially given that he won't be on any sex offender registry list.

Cutting to the chase: I do not believe Kyle Payne cut his hair as a compulsive expression of self-loathing.

Payne has not demonstrated any self-loathing, in my opinion. Also, many women I know dislike themselves, some intensely. They don't necessarily pull out or cut their hair, compulsively or otherwise.

Kyle, to me, is not self-hating. He's self-absorbed. Big difference: the first makes him dangerous to himself, the second makes him dangerous to others.

Hence the case itself and his on-going determination to have a good life.

The White Liberal Conundrum

On the topic of "Political Correctness", I think The White Liberal Conundrum, by Kai Chang, says it all. Period.

Original source: http://www.kaichang.net/2007/10/the-white-liber.html
Current source of archived essay: http://www.wutang-corp.com/forum/archive/index.php?t-90711.html

The White Liberal Conundrum




by Kai Chang

Anti-racism is a rewarding but grueling journey which must be consciously undertaken and intrepidly pursued (both inwardly and outwardly) if one hopes to make serious progress along its twisting passageways and steep inclines. There's no static end-condition at which an anti-racist can arrive and definitively declare, "Hallelujah! I am Not A Racist!" Rather, it's a lifelong process of historical education, vigilant self-interrogation, personal growth, and socio-political agitation. Racism fractures our world and our own intactness; anti-racism seeks to proactively treat these bleeding wounds and restore the integrity of our humanity.

As I've often noted, many white liberals remain oblivious to the depth and breadth of anti-racist work, opting to hide behind the delusion that anyone who votes for Democrats and doesn't have a pointy hood in the closet is "a good guy" in the movement toward greater social justice — as though the Democratic Party (http://skepticalbrotha.wordpress.com/2007/10/10/any-thoughts/) is some bastion of progressivism and not one of two hands strangling US polity on behalf of the ruling class and the corporate-political establishment which sponsors its power. Some might be surprised to learn that when people of color talk about racism amongst ourselves, white liberals often receive a far harsher skewering than white conservatives or overt racists. Many of my POC friends would actually prefer to hang out with an Archie Bunker-type who spits flagrantly offensive opinions, rather than a colorblind (http://temple3.wordpress.com/2007/10/08/nothing-to-do-with-race/) liberal whose insidious paternalism, dehumanizing tokenism, and cognitive indoctrination ooze out between superficially progressive words. At least the former gives you something to work with, something above-board to engage and argue against; the latter tacitly insists on imposing and maintaining an illusion of non-racist moral purity which provides little to no room for genuine self-examination or racial dialogue.

Countless blogospheric discussions on racism amply demonstrate the manner in which many white liberals start acting victimized and angry (http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/glosario.html#magikattax) if anyone attempts to burst their racism-free bubble, oftentimes inexplicably bringing up non-white friends, lovers, adopted children, relatives, ancestors; dismissing, belittling, or obtusely misreading substantive historically-informed analysis of white supremacism as either "divisive rhetoric" or "flaming"; downplaying racism as an interpersonal social stigma and bad PR, rather than an overarching system of power under which we all live and which has socialized us all (http://www.genderracepower.com/?p=228); and threatening to walk away from discussion if persons of color do not comform to a narrow white-centered comfort zone. Such people aren't necessarily racists in the hate-crime sense of the word, but they are usually acting out social dynamics created by racism and replicating the racist social relationships they were conditioned since birth to replicate.

Of course not all white liberals are like this. I'd say that a significant minority of white liberals are actually interested in learning about anti-racism once properly exposed to it. This requires enough humility to admit that people of color have something to teach white folks, a concept that many whites struggle with because racism teaches us that whiteness is the seat of authoritative knowledge, while brownness is the repository of murky musical mysticism which whiteness may dip into at will for spiritual support and servile entertainment. Nevertheless, some white folks manage to claw and bootstrap their way out of their own conditioning, opening their hearts and minds to previously unseen worlds from which the voices and stories of people of color emerge; studying and observing the profound effects of racist society on their own perceptual prisms and on the shape of the world (http://slanttruth.com/2007/10/03/the-common-elements-of-oppression/); and consciously, steadily working to counteract those effects. Such people become allies to people of color.

From what I can see, though, a solid majority of white liberals maintain a fairly hostile posture toward anti-racist discourse and critique, while of course adamantly denying this hostility. Many white liberals consider themselves rather enlightened for their ability to retroactively support the Civil Rights movement and to quote safely dead anti-racist icons (http://slanttruth.com/2007/10/03/on-civil-rights-leaders-that-are-loved-and-conveniently-dead/), even though their present-day physical, intellectual, and political orbits remain mostly segregated. They somehow take pride in being more "down with the brown" than their conservative brethren; indeed they exhibit a certain strange glee in highlighting and exploiting the "macaca" and "call me" moments of their political opponents. Armed with "diversity" soundbites and melanin-inclusive photo-ops, they seek electoral, financial, and public relations support from people of color. Yet the consistent outcome of their institution-building agendas is to deprioritize (http://blacksmythe.com/blog/2007/09/30/a-few-more-things-about-that-white-progressive-blogosphere/) and marginalize our voices, perspectives, experiences, concerns, cultures, and initiatives. When you get right down to it, the unrecognized political reality is that most white liberals have more in common with white conservatives — social cues, family ties, cognitive biases, cultural backdrops, etc. — than they do with people of color. I'm calling this tangle of contradictions the white liberal conundrum.

Obviously the record of white liberals when it comes to racism isn't good. Now I know that white folks frequently bemoan the guilt-laden burden of inheriting the racist legacy of their predecessors; to which I can only respond: If white folks disavow and destroy all the systemic advantages and interlocking privileges and perks of whiteness, then they're off the hook! But you can't enjoy the lifelong fruits of the legacy while disowning the accountability, right? That's not how it works.

For people of color, the white liberal conundrum manifests as an ongoing and often exhausting struggle to determine the extent to which they can or should work with, or trust, white liberals. Some feel that it's a waste of time, that most white folks will never get it and those who do will find their way into POC-led movements on their own. Others believe that some modicum of energy should be extended toward bringing white persons (http://www.prometheus6.org/node/18197) of good will on board anti-racism and forging common ground. I'm not really sure myself, but I do know that either way, communities of color are going to be on the move and organizing, resisting the racist social order with ingenuity and hope, even as white supremacist imperialism heaps its abuse (http://brownfemipower.com/?p=1880)as it always has (http://www.intrapolitics.org/node/64): outside of the imperious gaze of the mainstream; advanced by the tireless efforts of innumerable anonymous activists, organizers, visionaries, artists, collaborators, innovators; continually appropriated and/or sabotaged by the political and media establishment; reduced and glossed over by mainstream journalists and historians as the miraculous mojo magic of establishment-anointed "leaders" (http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=w071008&s=olopade100907); and despite all that, continually inspiring vibrant cultural scenes, enabling potent spiritual networks, and undertaking positive socio-political interventions and transformations. upon dark bodies around the world. Anti-racist progress will continue to occur.

For those white liberals and progressives who become serious about extracting racism from their worlds and their lives, who wish to participate in the dismantling of white supremacy, the white liberal conundrum usually culminates in some sort of series of crossroads (http://ilykadamen.blogspot.com/2007/05/preview-of-coming-attractions.html) and reckonings; they're often forced to make tough decisions about which of their previous alliances and networks — newly illuminated and often unfavorably recontextualized by anti-racist analysis — are worth trying to maintain, which are too invested in the distortions of the white lens (http://www.theunapologeticmexican.org/glosario.html#whitelens) to salvage, and which new directions and networks to pursue.

The good news for those who wish to embark upon (http://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Learning-Anti-Racism-Developmental-Approach/dp/0807736376) the anti-racist journey is that there's plenty (http://www.rachelstavern.com/) of (http://whyaminotsurprised.blogspot.com/2006/08/for-white-folks-how-to-become-ally.html) help (http://www.timwise.org/) along (http://www.racialicious.com/) the (http://allywork.solidaritydesign.net/) way. The literature on anti-racist history, theory, and practice is voluminous. In the intertube age, it's not all that hard to find. White liberals who have no interest in engaging this vital body of knowledge, who refuse to incorporate it into their political vision and agendas, cannot be considered allies to people of color; they shouldn't act surprised when not all that many persons of color show up for their parties, contribute to their causes, or buy into their narratives. On the other hand, those who have the courage to allow themselves to be transformed by anti-racist consciousness have a shot at escaping the white liberal conundrum; they turn their critical powers upon their own lives, minds, and hearts first; they listen and read and reflect with seering honesty; and thus they begin to recognize — and actively oppose — the breadth and depth of racism's consistent, dehumanizing, body-shattering impact on the shape of this wounded world.

Posted by Kai at 04:33 PM

Celie's Revenge: When White Males Attack: Larry Flynt, Racism & The Left

Celie's Revenge: When White Males Attack: Larry Flynt, Racism & The Left, by Celie's Revenge, addresses a political history almost everyone on the White Left ignores completely. Why? One reason: its own investment in white male supremacy.

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