Skip trying to prove you're not racist

[netmouse]

- because it's not about you.




Since before I went to Wiscon, I've been meaning to respond to something tlatoani said in response to a post of mine about the fans of color speak out day May 18:

I'm listening, but that's all I'm doing. As a white guy, it isn't my place to get involved, and many of the participants in the discussion have made that quite clear. What seems to irritate them the most is well-meaning liberal white people who feel the need to prove how non-racist they are. I see their point, so I'm staying out of it.

This comment rather spectacularly misses the point of what I've seen a number of people post, so I wanted to address it. Slowly, and hopefully clearly.

There are a number of contexts in which "liberal white people who feel the need to prove how non-racist they are" are in fact very annoying to people of color who are trying to talk to them (or others in their vicinity). Here are a few:

1. Someone has tried to point out that this LWP (liberal white person) said something that came across as racist, or otherwise echoed with white privilege, in a way that bothered them. LWP fails to examine what they said and instead derails into proving how non-racist they are.
   
2. LWP's friends also speak past the statements of POC to try to prove how non-racist the LWP is.
   
3. Some POC has started to speak up about an issue that is troubling to them. The issue in question touches on something (perhaps a book or an author) that is very important to a LWP, who proceeds to try to explain why a) the issue doesn't really exist in the book or b) the item in question doesn't bother them, so it shouldn't bother anyone else, and c) the LWP knows their perspective is informed and they are non-racist, so they feel they have a more important opinion than the POC. POC tries to reorient discussion to their own experience. LWP asserts how non-racist they are.
   

In all those cases, a LWP who feels motivated to prove how non-racist they are gets annoying, but not because the white person is trying to be non-racist; rather because the white person is avoiding facing forward into the real issue and listening to POC by derailing into a conversation about what a non-racist person they are. And this is not actually the conversation anyone wants to be having. Here, listen to Jay explain that.

I've seen some POC go so far as to say that it looks like what white people fear the most in any conversation is to be called racist. So that if someone says something you *said* was racist, you feel the need to respond to the implication that you are racist, and react to that, before you can possibly listen to point the other person was trying to make.

If you find yourself reacting this way, you should definitely stop. Try harder to listen, go off and have your tearful reaction to being called out on your racism elsewhere, whatever, but skip listing all the reasons you are not racist.

Partly because, well, we're just about all racist, really. Studies show that. Our perceptions, our behavior; all of these things are influenced by race and the color of someone's skin. At one point in race discussions I commented that I thought that without race, there is no racism, basically reflecting the concept that since I do not believe in a biological basis for definitions of race, it does not exist for me (so, the implication goes, how can I be racist?). But the truth is I am. For all that there is no biological definition for it, and the social constructions keep changing race is real as soon as people make decisions on the basis of race. Which we do all the time. It's real only because people believe in it, but you can say the same thing about the value of money. Both have a deep impact on how the world works despite the fact that their values are socially constructed.

I'm not making these posts about race in an attempt to prove how non-racist I am. I'm making them because I am trying to do something to change how the world is. I post about these things in part to let fans of color know that I see them, I hear them, and I think they matter. Do they care about my opinions? I don't know. But I'm hoping some of the people who read my journal might care enough to consider acknowledging these people too. Not to try to prove something about yourself, but to try to reach out to others.

Comments

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

In mainstream society, calling someone a racist is a challenge and an insult, and it is taken to mean a pretty specific and odious type of mindset and behavior.

I'm not sure from your post if you noticed this, but nowhere in my original post did I suggest a context where someone has actually called the LWP a racist. I say this not to assert that it hasn't happened at various points elsewhere when people have discussed issues of race, but to point out that you read what I posted and came out in defense of people who had actually been labeled as a racist. Which was not a situation I had described.

Having someone say that something you said reflects institutionalized racism or reminds you of racist patterns of thoughts or behavior is certainly challenging, yes. But challenging need not be the same as insulting. To people who are used to being right (and as deephad pointed out here (http://deepad.dreamwidth.org/29598.html), "When you are part of the dominant culture, you are in a system that rewards your default way of living as being termed 'right', and you grow up thinking that being 'wrong' is bad, and therefore a serious enough offence to either paralyse you, or invoke anger at the name-caller.
When you are a minority or a survivor of an oppressive system, you are used to your identity being termed 'wrong', and you work on the assumption that the systems are all broken."), being challenged is more likely to seem insulting, and to people who believe racism is bad, the easiest way to dispel the cognitive dissonance of hearing that something you said sounded racist is to reassure yourself that the perceptions of the listener are wrong. The more challenging way forward is to realize that you have unexamined patterns of thought and behavior that contradict your consciously held values.


When Newt Gingrich called Sondra Sotomoyer a racist, I didn't hear anyone explaining that it was okay because we are all racist.

Well, and of course different people use that word with different intentions. When Newt used it, he meant it as an attack, and as a warning to his fellow white people that the president is trying to put someone into a very influential position who might make decisions preferentially in favor of people who are not of the white persuasion. There were in fact quite a number of us going "So? People already on the bench are already doing the same thing, in the other direction." -in other words, there were some of us saying it's fine if she's somewhat racist, in a compensatory direction. But we don't happen to be media moguls, so you probably didn't see that.

But there are also people who might tell you you sound like a racist out of caring motives, who don't mean to attack you.

If conversations get derailed when this word comes into play, maybe different words are needed.
- which goes back to my earlier point about the contexts I mentioned, and about people coing from there to "but calling someone a racist is an attack". In quite a number of cases in recent discussions, POC have tried using diplomatic words, other words, like "problematic" or "bothers me" or "makes me uncomfortable, or "reminds me of the damage from this stereotype and a study that indicated the damage is systemic in such-and-such way" or *whatever*, and if the comment is clearly race-related some LWP will play the 'OMG I think you're calling me a racist I am not a racist have you no idea what horrible people racists are and were that is not me' card. So, yes, we need other words, but I think we also need to retrain ourselves and each other on our reaction to these terms and concepts.

To a number of POC it is quite literally baffling that White people always seem to feel attacked when they are called racist. It may be a mainstream cultural reaction, but it's not the only available cultural reaction.

[cathshaffer.livejournal.com]

I think the word is equally inflammatory whether it's used in its "ist" or "ism" form, with or without mitigating qualifiers. I think the problem specifically with the LWP, as opposed to the common white person (found in the wild throughout the central and southwestern US), is that the LWP has frequently used the term "racist" or "racism" in the past as one of the vilest insults imaginable targeted at someone who is pretty much diametrically opposed to everything the LWP believes in. In this context, it would be better to be a pedophile than a racist, so it's pretty difficult to wrap your mind around the whole "everybody's racist" viewpoint. I honestly think that the type of conflict you describe may contain some honest miscommunication. :-)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

To a number of POC it is quite literally baffling that White people always seem to feel attacked when they are called racist.

In some sense, it's a sign of how thoroughly they've won that war. Yes, in many segments of society that's one of the worst accusations you can make against people, right up there with, oh, hard to be precise in this kind of thing, let's say spousal abuse.

Kinda inconvenient that this broad agreement on how bad racism is hasn't automatically also equipped people with a better understanding of the racial stereotypes they often work form, of course.

When an individual squirms and objects to people being "rude" to them, of course it's often a defensive reaction, and sometimes they'd react that way to ANY level of criticism in this area. It can serve to derail the conversation, or be defensively useful in other ways. It needs to be ignored / overridden sometimes.

Looking at larger groups and from a much higher height, when people want to get other people to change their thinking and/or behavior, the way they express that desire is key. People react at least as much to the style of a message as to the detailed content.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, who has won what war?

As it was posed to me in an in-person discussion, it is confusing to black people how attacked white people feel by being called racist because (in the view of the person speaking to me) black people are more open and honest about their own racism. They have a different attitude toward it that makes it easier to own it.

I'm uncomfortable with this "one of the worst accusations you can make" comparison that's being made to things like spousal abuse and pedophilia (someone else mentioned pedophilia). Spousal abuse and pedophilia both involve activities that can get you thrown in Jail. Racism, not necessarily. So while it might be nearly as *upsetting* to be accused of racism, the potential affects of that accusation on your life are actually much less... bad.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, who has won what war?

Was I actually unclear, or are you just disagreeing?

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

You were unclear. Take out the pronouns.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

White people have been taught that being racist is a very bad thing. We seem generally to have internalized this teaching; we think that being racist is a very bad thing.

This is in many senses a good thing.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I think you're generalizing too far. Some white people have internalized this teaching. Maybe even most. not all. The war has not been won.

But for what progress has been made, that is in many senses a good thing, yes. But it's not a good thing in the sense that it make us over-react to people pointing out valid issues.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

"All" I certainly can't claim, no. But my conservative gun-nut friends, both here and the friends-of-friends down in Tennessee, seem to have black friends and Iranian friends and whoever else is around that they actually like, just as much as my liberal friends.

I think much of the remaining problem is in recognizing some types of racist behavior, more than in people thinking being racist is acceptable.

On the other hand, if I needed to find a taxi driver who would refuse to pick up black men, I'd look for a Somali (here in Minneapolis). I find this somewhat amusing in a sick kind of way.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Still, socially, it seems to me that it is that level of thing. You're right that, legally, other things are more serious. This is frequently true -- socially serious accusations aren't always the most serious legally. There are still circles where accusing somebody of being homosexual is right up there at the top, too, even though it hasn't been severely illegal in most of the US at all recently. Social and legal don't track, and in the context of the give and take of discussion, it's the social severity that counts.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Social and economic severity, yes. People can still lose their jobs for being homosexual, and still somewhat regularly get beaten to death for that in this country. For being racist? odds are, no. (you might lose your job or employability if you're, like, a radio commentator, maybe, or a big-name actor who lets slip). (more than a quarter of the US still has sodomy laws on the books (http://www.sodomylaws.org/), and some states still try to enforce them, but we are making progress).

Can you give me an example of someone's *existing* social circle turning away from them because of an accusation of racism? I mean, you don't have to tell me who, but can you think of one? I think people may be reacting more to a mythos of social implications than to a reality.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Hmmm; I'm not sure I can think of an example of someone's existing social circle turning away from them period, regardless of reason. I started looking for those to then sort for causes, and was a bit startled not to think of one. I can think of two cases of people who have moved away from social circles that might have been rejecting them, but it wasn't clear to me.