Some Racefail thoughts

[firecat]

If a person has multiple identities and names, and if they state that they do not want other people to publicly associate their different identities and names, it is wrong to publicly associate their different identities and names. (There might be exceptions to this if a person has committed criminal activities. But writing things that piss you off does not count as an exception.)

It is wrong to try to shut people up by threatening legal action against their blogs. If someone has done this to you, there are resources to help you.

When talking about systemic oppression of certain groups of people, the word "privilege" is used to describe the advantages a person gets if they happen to belong to a group that is "approved" by the system. The word applies to the behavior of the system as a whole. In this context, it is not synonymous with "advantage" or "influence." Therefore, in this context, there is no such thing as oppressed groups of people having "privilege...in internet debates."

50books_poc is a really cool community.

http://asim.livejournal.com/388028.html is an awesome post.

I am interested in the possibilities of the new LJ community fight_derailing.

I agree with what papersky said about trying to blend families, and I posted this comment:

Also, sometimes this happens: A person gets away from their family of origin for a while and gets a different perspective and decides that some of the things they "made allowances" for were not just rude/crude but toxic/damaging/abusive. And sometimes this person goes back and tries to talk about this to the family. And the family isn't able to entertain the different perspective, for whatever reason, and there's a great deal of hurt on both sides.

I think this is part of what's happening too. Not only in this Racefail thing, but in discussions of racism in general, and other isms.

Edited to add: jordan179 has taken strong exception to my viewpoint about the term "privilege" and my statement in the comments that privileged people have a moral obligation to non-privileged people. He has made a post in his journal inviting people to come over here and disagree with me.

I'm not interested in repeating the whole RaceFail'09 argument in my journal. I have my journal set to screen comments from people who are not on my friends list, and I will be screening comments that I don't want to deal with. If this isn't enough to prevent my becoming seriously upset, I will freeze comments on the whole entry.

This is an excellent example of how white privilege gives me advantages. I can walk away from a conversation about race that I don't want to deal with. People of color can't, because it informs their whole lives.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

When talking about systemic oppression of certain groups of people, the word "privilege" is used to describe the advantages a person gets if they happen to belong to a group that is "approved" by the system. The word applies to the behavior of the system as a whole. In this context, it is not synonymous with "advantage" or "influence." Therefore, in this context, there is no such thing as oppressed groups of people having "privilege...in internet debates."

So the accusation of "privilege" can never be made against people who belong to an officially "oppressed" group? And those with "privilege" are bound to treat those without "privilege" more politely than those without "privilege" are bound to treat those without "privilege?"

What happens if people from the "privileged" group just laugh in your face and see this for the polylogist nonsense that it is?

[firecat]

So the accusation of "privilege" can never be made against people who belong to an officially "oppressed" group?

Correct.

And those with "privilege" are bound to treat those without "privilege" more politely than those without "privilege" are bound to treat those without "privilege?"

I'm not sure how you got there from what I wrote. But I personally think that there is a moral obligation for people with privilege to treat people without privilege politely. I won't make statements about the moral obligations of people without privilege.

What happens if people from the "privileged" group just laugh in your face and see this for the polylogist nonsense that it is?

They get to live with the consequences of their actions.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

What happens if people from the "privileged" group just laugh in your face and see this for the polylogist nonsense that it is?

They get to live with the consequences of their actions.

Having successfully freed themselves from unearned guilt?

I can live with that.

I treat people without regard to their race. And I ask that people treat me the same way.

That is being non-racist. Granting special rights to members of an "oppressed" race on account of their group membership -- that is racist.

[firecat]

Granting special rights to members of an "oppressed" race on account of their group membership -- that is racist.

I don't think that what I'm talking about is "granting special rights."

The issue of whether it makes sense to ignore race when you are interacting with someone is exactly what a great deal of the blogosphere conversation I'm addressing has been about.

I completely disagree that ignoring race is always the right thing to do.

And I don't have the energy to try to convince you of that, but if you want to see some of the arguments on both sides, I invite you to check out the rest of the discussion (you can find links to relevant posts mentioned elsewhere in these comments).

[jinian.livejournal.com]

If we lived in a society that wasn't riddled with institutional and individual racism, I would likely agree with you. The reality where I am, though, is that we need to actively work to level the playing field. For examples and arguments, you could do worse than checking out IBARW's Delicious links for "racism 101" (http://delicious.com/ibarw/racism.101).

[firecat]

Thanks for posting that link.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

It is up to each individual to actively level his or her OWN "playing field." I am not going to discriminate against, or give anyone else a free pass for discriminating against, white people in order to "make up for" past discrimination against non-white people. I shall clearly see such behavior as racism, and condemn it, just as I would if it were discrimination against nonwhites. Even if it goes by a nice name, like "affirmative action."

Racism is racism, regardless of whose ox is being gored.

[leback.livejournal.com]

I treat people without regard to their race. And I ask that people treat me the same way.

I understand where you're coming from with this, but I haven't found it to be that simple. Maybe it depends on what "without regard to their race" means. Does it mean not making any specific assumptions about how their race has affected who they are or what they've experienced or what they think? Because that seems entirely reasonable to me. I do think that there are macro-level patterns in US society that make people of certain races more likely to have certain types of experiences, but I don't think it's safe to assume that those have affected everyone of any given race in identical ways, much less that they've led all people of any race to see the world in exactly the same way.

But the other thing I've seen similar language used to mean is, "Make the assumption that their race *hasn't* affected who they are or what they've experienced or what they think." This, I think, is implausible. I can point to all sorts of instances in my own life -- some small, some large -- where things have gone certain ways for *because I am white*. It's rarely whiteness alone that does it -- sometimes it's whiteness in combination with being female, and having a certain kind of family background, and living in a particular region -- but in a lot of cases, whiteness has been an important element in the mix. My experience has been that it's often (not always) gotten me treated better -- sometimes only as well as I deserved, while other people got less than they deserved; sometimes I've gotten breaks that I probably didn't deserve.

And I try not to be out there soliciting unfair advantages, because yeah, that's about the worst kind of racism right there.

But, one of the unfair advantages that I get in a lot of spaces is that people listen more closely to me and take me more seriously just because I match some stereotype they have of what a sensible knowledgeable person is supposed to look like. And one of the ways I try to avoid soliciting that advantage is to try to avoid assuming that everybody's listening to me and not the other guy just because I'm the one who's more persuasive. Sometimes that is why, but way too often, it's because the other guy doesn't match up to their stereotypes as well -- and one of the reasons for that can be that he's not white.

So in a space full of a bunch of people who I don't know well, I assume (because it's been my experience with people in general, and because I've read a lot of psychology studies that says it's incredibly common in the general population, even among people with the best of intentions) that a lot of them -- and I don't necessarily know which ones -- are stereotyping people in unfair ways, and that there are probably people in the room who aren't getting a fair hearing because of it. And when I'm thinking about that, I do more shutting up and making sure other people get a good chance to make their cases -- especially other people who have common stereotypes (like racial stereotypes, or stereotypes about money or education or regional background or language skills or culture or whatever) working against them.

It'd be nicer to just not take any notice of those kinds of traits at all, and assume no one else would either, and assume that if people were listening to me, it was just because I was the one most worth listening to. But those don't feel like safe assumptions to me. They're safer, for sure, than they would have been in the 1920s in Mississippi, or than they still would be in a lot of parts of the world, but they're still not all that safe.

So yeah (and I'm sorry this is so long-winded), I try not to assume anything about any specific person's experiences or traits or beliefs on the basis of their race, but I do assume that there's potentially a lot of white-supremacist racism still around me, and that I ought to be cautious not to take too much advantage of it. Which is maybe itself racist in your book, I don't know, but it seems better to me than the alternative.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

I've been lazy and haven't followed this argument, but I would say that a person who is oppressed on one axis can still have "privilege" on another.

Let's pick on our President as an example. He wouldn't have white privilege (although having white family members who helped raise him probably contributed some benefits in his case). But he has male privilege. He doesn't have upper-class privilege, but his middle class upbringing has more privilege than his wife's working class one. He does have education privilege, from that fine private school in Hawaii, and stints at Columbia and Harvard.

[firecat]

a person who is oppressed on one axis can still have "privilege" on another.

I agree with that, and you picked a good example. But I think the usefulness of trying to add up someone's privilege to contrast them with someone else's privilege is very limited.

Also I don't agree with matociquala's claim that people of color have "privilege" in Internet debates about race. I think that boils down to the claim that there is such a thing as "reverse privilege," and I don't think that's a valid concept.

I would not have a problem with the argument that people of color have "influence" on the Internet or have "advantages" in conversations about race. I don't agree with the latter argument, but I don't think it's invalid.

[kmd.livejournal.com]

Also I don't agree with matociquala's claim that people of color have "privilege" in Internet debates about race. I think that boils down to the claim that there is such a thing as "reverse privilege," and I don't think that's a valid concept.

Hmm. There's probably "reverse" stuff going on there, but I believe that what this statement from matociquala shows is a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of privilege.

Not all instances of deference are about privilege. Deferring to PoC in discussions of racism is, IMO, deference granted because of personal experience. I haven't experienced racism, I know less about it than people who have, so I should defer to them in discussions about racism. Also, as a white person raised in a white supremacist racist society, I have racism embedded in the way I think and act. So I need to stifle my own impulses in order to learn. So when I defer to PoC in discussions about racism (and I would be lying if I claimed that I always do that), I do so based on very logical, justified, warranted reasons.

Whereas privilege is precisely and only about unearned, unwarranted advantages.

So any deference PoC receive in discussions about racism (which is itself a distorted-by-white-privilege perception) is not privilege.

[irked-indeed.livejournal.com]

I agree with that, and you picked a good example. But I think the usefulness of trying to add up someone's privilege to contrast them with someone else's privilege is very limited.

Yet it seems from my (admittedly limited) vantagepoint that this is exactly what you're doing when you say, for instance:

"But I personally think that there is a moral obligation for people with privilege to treat people without privilege politely."

Either I compare my privilege to theirs in making this determination, or I have no way of making this determination- and it's not a single-axis comparison. If I interact with Barack Obama, am I morally obligated to treat him politely because of the greater privilege I possess, or is he so obligated to me because of the greater privilege he ppossesses? Without summing our respective privileges, that's a question I can't answer.

But I also agree with you that trying to do so is a waste of time, because it's pretty solidly impossible- what, does each axis get some arbitrary weight multiplier? Do we just see which of us can come up with more axes on which we're underprivileged?

Which makes the whole thing sort of impossible, and leaves me with what seems like a far more common-sensical approach: treat people with respect.

[firecat]

I agree that "treat people with respect" is an excellent thing to strive for, in general, and I think it would be peachy-keen if everyone treated each other with respect.

As for comparing privilege, I chose the words "add up to contrast" with care. I think there's a difference between a situation where you have to add on your fingers to try to figure out who's got more privilege than whom, and a situation where the power imbalance is obvious.

When I make moral judgements, I try to make them only on people I feel I have a fair bit in common with. Otherwise I don't know enough about their lives to have an informed opinion whether their behavior could/should have been better.

I have race privilege, so I feel justified in exercising a certain amount of judgement on the behavior of other people whom I think have race privilege.

I don't have enough information to judge the behavior of people who don't have race privilege, because I don't know what their lives are like.

So I am making a moral statement that only applies to people with privilege. I am saying "We should..."

I am not saying "...and people without privilege shouldn't." I am making no "should" statement at all about people without privilege. Because I don't have enough information.

And I still think it would be nice if everyone treated everyone else with respect.

[irked-indeed.livejournal.com]

All right.

Two follow-up questions, if you're willing:

1) How do you define racism? I'm genuinely curious; there's got to be a difference as to how you and I define the word somewhere, and I'd like to know where it is.

2) Are the folks you'd define as racially privileged morally obligated to treat other folks of racial privilege with respect?

[firecat]

1) There are probably definitions that are worded better, but I'll say that racism is a system that arises from the concept that people belong to racial groups, and that some racial groups are inherently superior to others.

Some people in the West don't believe in the "inherent superiority" part any more, at least not consciously/intellectually. (Most if not all of us still have some less conscious and/or emotional prejudice and racism.) But it's hard to dismantle the system that has been built up around these beliefs, especially because the people in power tend not to see a benefit in dismantling it. The result of the system is that people of color have more difficulties to deal with.

So (in the West) white people as a group still have most of the power and access. We don't just have easier access to education, jobs, money, and influence, but we also generally do NOT have to deal with certain hassles that people of color describe having to deal with all the time. (For examples of these things, see http://mmcisaac.faculty.asu.edu/emc598ge/Unpacking.html.)

2) I do think privileged people should treat each other with respect. But when people I think are more or less equals in terms of privilege behave disrespectfully toward each other, I don't always get as angry about it as I do when someone with cultural advantages behaves disrespectfully to someone without them.

[irked-indeed.livejournal.com]

Some people in the West don't believe in the "inherent superiority" part any more, at least not consciously/intellectually. (Most if not all of us still have some less conscious and/or emotional prejudice and racism.) But it's hard to dismantle the system that has been built up around these beliefs, especially because the people in power tend not to see a benefit in dismantling it. The result of the system is that people of color have more difficulties to deal with.

But in that case- if Bob, let's say, is a jerk to black people just because he enjoys the privileged position you feel he has relative to them, and not from any conviction that they're inferior- he's not being racist?

It seems like your definition misses a notion of action in racism- which, I just called you up on the spot, so easy for me to be critical, right? It'd leave the man who treats everyone equally, yet privately thinks little of Racial Group X, as a racist- while the lady who actively behaves differently (say, kicks members of Group Y only) isn't, as long as she doesn't think them inferior.

I'm just making these things up, so they're probably not the best analogies. But here's where I'm going with this: it seems to me that weighing attitude against action is problematic for your position either way you go.

On the one side, if my actions are irrelevant to my racism*, then I'm under no unusual or extraordinary obligations toward any particular racial groups- because what I do to them doesn't matter (on an axis of "How racist am I?"). Indeed, if I can "avoid the concept that people belong to racial groups," I automatically pass your test and am non-racist; surely this is possible, as I frequently manage to avoid other such concepts- such as that people belong to eye-color groups. Barring that, I need only judge none of the groups as "inherently superior."

On the other, if my actions are entirely relevant, then I CANNOT practice special consideration towards certain racial groups- because such behavior would itself be racist.

2) If I can be a little pedantic: "should" treat each other with respect, or are "morally obligated" to?


*- "My" here is not an attempt by the author to associate himself with racism.

[firecat]

if Bob, let's say, is a jerk to black people just because he enjoys the privileged position you feel he has relative to them, and not from any conviction that they're inferior- he's not being racist?

His actions are racist because they contribute to the system of racism. In my view the system is what's really important. Individual behavior is important insofar as it contributes to the system. Motives and beliefs are important insofar as the system inculcates racist beliefs and that's part of why it's difficult to dismantle the system.

It seems like your definition misses a notion of action in racism

You're right. Do you wish to submit a better definition?

if I can "avoid the concept that people belong to racial groups,"

Only you can't avoid it. Because the concept exists in the culture you're part of. Even if you personally don't have any knowledge of that concept (which is extremely improbable unless you're an infant), your actions take place in the context of your culture and are interpreted by other people in that context.

if my actions are entirely relevant, then I CANNOT practice special consideration towards certain racial groups- because such behavior would itself be racist.

The problem here is the term "special consideration." What does this mean?

Let's say that we agree everyone should treat everyone else with respect. Then we need to define what it means to treat someone with respect. Does doing this mean making some effort to understand their circumstances? I say yes.

My attempts to do this have led me to believe there is a system called racism and it affects people's circumstances. And if I try to keep in mind a person's circumstances when I act, then I need to take this into account. On one level this will look like I am treating some people with "special" consideration. On another level I am striving not to. Or rather, perhaps, I am striving to do so in every case.

2) "Should." Which is inconsistent, yes.

[leback.livejournal.com]

If I interact with Barack Obama, am I morally obligated to treat him politely because of the greater privilege I possess, or is he so obligated to me because of the greater privilege he possesses?

For me, in situations like this, it tends to come down to the specifics of the conversation we're having -- how each of our experiences (or what I think might be true about those experiences from the cues available to me) relate to the particular topic under discussion, and how the particular conversational setting might be giving one person an unjustified edge over the other.

Which really means -- as I think you're pointing out -- that I think each person should treat the other politely, insofar as politeness involves trying to make sure everybody gets a fair chance to express themselves. It's just that what I see as fair depends a lot on the people and the situation, and so instead of dictating some fixed set of behaviors, politeness for me dictates paying attention to context and behaving in a way that suits the situation at hand.

So in some conversations, that means I (as a white person) am going to try to defer to people from minority racial backgrounds, both because they're the ones whose experience (in my observation) often isn't represented as well in our society's common understandings -- and thus more of what they have to say will be new to me or others, while I can probably make myself understood relatively easily. Meanwhile, in other conversations, some other difference between us might be more relevant to determining which of us is at an advantage, and I might expect politeness to demand more deference from them, instead.