I’m a bit confused here… Is Black History Month really racist?

My feeling is that what’s racist is the ghettoisation of black music in the other 11 months.  What’s racist is that MC’s and DJ’s can’t get into college music programs, but opera singers and violists can.

And I also sort of feel that if we’re going to be angry and disgusted about anything, it should be the racism in the police and judicial system.  Or the racism in our drug policy.  These are big deals.  Black Music Month just doesn’t seem that serious to me.

Am I missing something?

I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on, she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. Theres a pattern emerging here, she said. (USA Today)

Latoya Peterson over at Racialicious has a great analysis of this comment. It’s true that Clinton has some (marginal?) advantage amongst white working class voters. That means she may be better qualified to compete for the white, working class vote in the general election. If that’s all she was trying to say, I think it’d be a pretty uncontroversial comment.

But that’s not the conclusion she is trying to reach. She is trying to make a point about the breadth of her coalition and therefore her electability as compared to Obama’s. As Peterson points out:

It doesn’t matter that Barack has more delegates and Clinton and Obama are neck and neck in the popular vote. No, fuck that. He still isn’t electable. The white vote is important, but it is not a monolith. But that doesn’t seem to matter. Obama will lose white votes (despite showing more than respectable numbers) and that alone should show us that he’s not electable. (Latoya Peterson)

Peterson also points to this quote from dnA over at Too Sense, which I think sums up Clinton’s intentions (conscious or not) quite well:

This kind of comment is less a description than an agitator, it’s meant to give white voters the impression that they would be disenfranchised by an Obama win. It’s a not so subtle effort to evoke racial resentment over Obama’s success. (dnA)

But I wanted to share with the other white people who read this blog a basic truth that I’ve come to believe, something which was hard to realize, but which I am pretty confident in today:

All white people do and say racist things. By extension, all white people are racist.

The classic white response to this is “That’s crazy. Some white people are racist, but not all of us.” Probably some of you are thinking that right now. It’s what I believed most of my life, and I thought… well, I hoped that I was in the “non-racist” category.

As white people, we presume that the status quo with respect to race is that things are pretty ok. We think all white people can’t be racist because that would mean that the status quo is all screwed up, and like I said we presume the status quo is pretty ok. We have the privilege of believing that racism is not normal, not typical, not endemic.

But in fact the normal state of affairs it not ok, and people of color know it. They live it every day. Many will admit it openly to white people. Most will admit it with other people of color. Racism is bad, yet it’s normal, typical, endemic.

Contrary to the beliefs of racism deniers, the status quo is, in fact, all screwed up. The only thing allowing us to think that racism is rare is our whiteness.

As white people, we often respond with one of the following, when we’re accused of racism, whether directly (you’re racist!) or indirectly as a proxy for our race (those white people are racist!):

- yes, but I/they didn’t know there were racial connotations to that.
- yes, but I/they weren’t intending to be racist.
- yes, but I/they don’t actually believe that about people of color.
- yes, but not all white people do/say that.
- yes, but I/they are clearly a good person because of x,y, and z so don’t be mad!

These statements can all be roughly translated as:

- yes, they did do that, but let’s not talk about that, instead affirm that white people, aka me, are still ok!

Whether being racist makes us bad people is a reasonable topic of conversation. There’s nothing wrong with talking about it, and there’s nothing wrong with arguing that people who say and do racist things can still be good people.

What is not okay, and in fact amounts to further racism, is the belief that in the midst of a complaint about racism it is ok to derail the conversation to talk about whether white people are good people.

It’s not ok. For the most part, someone who is raising the issue of racism, especially if they are a person of color, does not care whether white people are actually good people, ethically speaking. To demand that the conversation focuses on that issue is to derail the concerns of people of color and privilege the concerns of white people. That’s racist too.

The sad truth is that this tactic is just one of a huge bag of tricks we white people have for pushing the concerns of people of color into the background without acknowledging our racism. Identifying and disabling these hidden tricks in ourselves is a difficult, lifelong pursuit. But it’s the only way to heal our racism, and it’s peanuts compared to the crap people of color have to deal with every day.

Racism is real, and the way to respond when someone brings it up is to respond with genuine concern and humility, and acknowledgment that yes, in fact, we white people do and say racist things.  Conversations about racism are an opportunity to learn to be a little less so.

John F. Berger wanted to “have sex” with 100 women. Unable to find any women who would “have sex” with him, he began drugging and raping women. He was apparently close to his goal of raping 100 women when he drugged and raped Tressa Gross.

Unlike the previous dozens of women, the dose of GHB he gave Gross was fatal. It’s not clear if she was clinically dead before or after he raped her, and he wouldn’t really have noticed, but the drugs he gave her killed her.

On Friday, Berger was sentenced to five years in prison, with the option of parole after four.

For drugging, raping, and mudering a woman. Nearly the hundredth he raped.

…

On August 18th, 2006, a group of black lesbians were approached by a man named Dwayne Buckle, who threatened to one of them he would “fuck [her] straight,” spat on the women, and threw a lit cigarette at them. The women also allegedly spat at him, and verbally threatened him. A fight ensued, which was joined by two other male bystanders, and Buckle was allegedly stabbed by Patreese Johnson, one of the women, who testified she was trying to get him off one of her friends whom he was choking. Buckle was hospitalized for stomach and liver wounds. He was in a position to make jokes about the situation as of the 19th.

To my knowledge, Buckle was not charged. But four of the women involved were convicted of and sentenced to prison terms of three and a half years, five years, eight years, and for Patreese Johnson eleven years in prison.

For stabbing someone non-fatally in arguably self defense.

…

Rape and muder, part of a pattern of serial rape = 5 years

Stabbing someone in a two-way skirmish, arguably in self defense = 11 years

…

Not only is there sexism, racism, and homophobia evident in the distribution of justice, the media coverage is full of misogynist bias. Articles in the popular proess continually use the phrase “having sex” for what is clearly “rape”. Journalists commonly use the phrase “making advances” or “saying hi” to describe what should be called “verbal and physical assault, spitting, throwing a cigarette and threatening rape”.

The more I read, the more I am disheartened at the extent to which our justice system, a reflection of our society, is deeply, deeply corrupted.

I spent the day surrounded by beautiful things: the words of Dr. King. People who love me. Beautiful music inspired by the day, by San Diego, by the divine, by the erotic. Dancing and difference and queer bodies. Food made with love and shared with love.

The Sex Worker’s Art Show came to San Diego, and along with it inspiration and beauty and celebration. Bodies of different colors, shapes, sizes, and genders. Bodies laughed about, spoken through, and hungered for. Words sweated over and delivered passionately.

But today I felt wounded, despite all this beauty. Continually unable to smile, or only able to smile briefly. Able to connect my love to another human being for a moment, only to lose it; to wander back into a place of fear.

I think, for better or for worse, Dr. King’s message got lost in this.

X addresses the failure of the legislature to follow through on campaign promises made to black Americans:

In this present administration they have in the House of Representatives 257 Democrats to only 177 Republicans. They control two-thirds of the House vote. Why can’t they pass something that will help you and me? In the Senate, there are 67 senators who are of the Democratic Party. Only 33 of them are Republicans. Why, the Democrats have got the government sewed up, and you’re the one who sewed it up for them. And what have they given you for it? Four years in office, and just now getting around to some civil-rights legislation. Just now, after everything else is gone, out of the way, they’re going to sit down now and play with you all summer long — the same old giant con game that they call filibuster. All those are in cahoots together. Don’t you ever think they’re not in cahoots together, for the man that is heading the civil-rights filibuster is a man from Georgia named Richard Russell. When Johnson became president, the first man he asked for when he got back to Washington, D.C., was “Dicky” — that’s how tight they are. That’s his boy, that’s his pal, that’s his buddy. But they’re playing that old con game. One of them makes believe he’s for you, and he’s got it fixed where the other one is so tight against you, he never has to keep his promise.

I grew up hearing that Malcolm X advocated violence. But reading this speach, I see that X is advocating something much more profound:

When ever you’re going after something that belongs to you, anyone who’s depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal. And this was pointed out by the Supreme Court decision. It outlawed segregation. Which means segregation is against the law. Which means a segregationist is breaking the law. A segregationist is a criminal. You can’t label him as anything other than that. And when you demonstrate against segregation, the law is on your side. The Supreme Court is on your side.

Now, who is it that opposes you in carrying out the law? The police department itself. With police dogs and clubs. Whenever you demonstrate against segregation, whether it is segregated education, segregated housing, or anything else, the law is on your side, and anyone who stands in the way is not the law any longer. They are breaking the law, they are not representatives of the law. Any time you demonstrate against segregation and a man has the audacity to put a police dog on you, kill that dog, kill him, I’m telling you, kill that dog. I say it, if they put me in jail tomorrow, kill that dog. Then you’ll put a stop to it. Now, if these white people in here don’t want to see that kind of action, get down and tell the mayor to tell the police department to pull the dogs in. That’s all you have to do. If you don’t do it, someone else will.

As I understand it, X is not advocating violence, X is advocating self defense. X is saying that if someone’s rights are being infringed upon by the very people who are supposed to be protecting their rights, they are then forced fight for those rights, and should not be ashamed to die for them.

Tonight I was also reading about the violent resistance which broke out in Brooklyn in 1966 in response to the city’s failure to follow through on promises to create a review board that would create some accountability for the city’s police. When you cannot trust the police to protect you under the law, and when you have no representation in the government, and when you are systematically excluded from voting, where else can you turn but violent resistance?

Reading all of this, I’m constantly reminded of current events. Voter disenframchisement. Racist police. Lack of political representation and failure to follow through on campaign promises.  I’ve seen them all in the news in the last few years, if not months.

link

(via Mental Oasis)

But I’ve found a few good role models. I see pro-feminist things in the men around me that I can emulate, even men who don’t identify as pro-feminist. And really, many things that women feminists do are totally appropriate for men to do: defying gender stereotypes, calling people out on sexism, spreading information about sexist events as they happen around us.

One of the best recommendations I think I’ve gotten from women feminists is that I should be constantly checking my privilege. That whenever I am doing something or expecting someone else to do something I should think about what role privilege played in making it easier or harder for us.

The trouble is: I’m a white, straight-acting male, and that simple fact makes me blind to a lot of things. I’ve never had to think about whether people thought I got a job because of my gender. I’ve never had to try to reverse that, and until fairly recently I wasn’t aware that some women and minorities have to worry about that. Not every woman and every minority has to worry about it, but I’ve certainly benefited by the fact that I was born into a group of people who is categorically exempt from that concern.

To make this job easier, a number of “Privilege Checklists” have been fashioned, to help people see privileges that might be invisible to them:

White Privilege Checklist

Male Privilege Checklist

Straight Privilege Checklist

Non-Trans Privilege Checklist

Update:

Being Poor

Average Sized Privilege Checklist

Able-Bodied Privilege Checklist

Obviously, it’s useful to read those checklists that apply to you. But the ones they don’t apply to you (because you’re a person of color or queer or female or transgendered) might be worthwhile to look at too. Because maybe there are privileges you enjoy that others in your gender/orientation/race do not. There are privileges on the Straight Privilege Checklist that apply to me, and privileges that don’t.

I kind of feel like these things are important to know.