Video Blog: The Woodlawn Plantation & the Legacy of Slavery
As part of Black History Month, I have put together this video blog on my time speaking at Woodlawn School, a private school that sits on the property that was once a slave-holding plantation. This video blog is a part of my processing of the time I spent on campus, dealing with the legacy of slavery.
Listening is the Root of Justice
So . . . Keep an eye out for a video blog I’ll be posting later today, but in the mean time, someone asked me to repost a piece I had published in Good Men Project on Change From Within, so here ’tis:
Listening is the Root of Justice
Reflections on Listening, Privilege, and Twitter Conversations
Talking about identity, power, privilege, and oppression are hard enough when we have unlimited characters in which to conduct the discussion. In turn, why so many (including myself) decide to have these tough conversations over Twitter is beyond me, but it happens. Recently a highly-publicized conversation took place on Twitter between The Good Men Project founder Tom Matlack and some feminist and anti-racist women and men concerning the language and perspectives Tom had taken in some pieces here on GMP.
The majority of the conversation related to feminism, male privilege, and the concept of being a male ally, and the conversation inspired such controversy, that much publishing has been done in its wake (see here, here, here, and here as a place to start). However, a small strain of the conversation related to a comparison Tom made between black men being overrepresented in prisons and a piece Hugo Schwyzer published explaining why it’s understandable for men to be “guilty until proven innocent” when it comes to rape.
Race scholar Sarah Jackson took issue with his comparison and tried to engage in a discussion with him about why the analogy is problematic.
If there’s anything we White folks are good at, it’s getting defensive when we think we’re being called racist, and we’re especially good at getting defensive when we’re told that we may, in fact, be benefitting from White Privilege.
In reading through the Twitter conversation, I had to stop here for a minute because this hit a little too close to home. In my attempts to become an ally to Women, People of Color, LGBTQ folks, and other traditionally-marginalized identities, I’ve definitely messed up – A Lot. One of the hardest things for me in attempting to build ally relationships, then, has been to hear that I’ve messed up and not simply get defensive and retreat into my privilege.
A professor of Color in college once told me, “The best thing you can learn to do if you want to be an ally is realize that you’re going to fuck up, and you’re going to do it a lot, so you will need to learn to apologize with honesty and a true desire to change. Then don’t get hung up . . . move forward and do better.”
On Black History Month
Because I get quite tired of hearing this question, I thought I would put together a little visual representation my response…
Click to Enlarge
“Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls” – Racism or Critical Cultural Commentary?
There is a meme sensation sweeping the internet!! It all started with “Shit Girls Say.” The concept is that someone (often those who are not a member of the group who is being mocked) mocks the things that a group of people stereotypically say. Simple enough . . . and sometimes HILARIOUS.
We’ve got Shit Yogis Say, Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys, Shit Rednecks Say (“Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit!”), Shit White Feminists Say, and Shit Guys Don’t Say (or guys not named Jamie Utt). The meme has had the power to do some great mocking and cultural commentary and to point out some important realities. For instance, Shit Everybody Says to Rape Victims and Part II (WARNING, CAN BE TRIGGERING TO SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE) does a fantastic job of highlighting the ways that survivors of sexual violence are often blamed, shamed, and ignored when they seek help after their trauma.
One of the most popular of these videos is Shit White Girls Say . . . To Black Girls:
This particular take on the meme caused the internet (and particularly the Twitterverse) to EXPLODE. Charges of racism were thrown at the video’s creator, comedian and blogger Franchesca Ramsey. In response, people tried to explain how this is not racism but in fact is trying to highlight the type of racism that Black Women must deal with every day coming from White Women.
Hijacking the Language and Legacy of Dr. King
Yesterday, on the day honoring the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a lot of people were posting quotes from Dr. King to Facebook and Twitter. By far, the most commonly posted quote was one from King’s I Have a Dream speech that he delivered on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. During that speech, Dr. King said,
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
His sentiment is a powerful one, a sentiment that calls for a different racial reality than he knew as a child or than his children knew. This quote is part of a radical ideology of racial justice that moves past a negative peace of White Privilege and Supremacy to a justice that is only realized through concerted social action.
Out of context, though, White people LOVE this quote.
As someone who regularly takes part in or initiates conversations about race and racial justice, I have been noticing a disturbing trend more and more often lately: people using the words of Dr. King out of context to silence conversations on race.
The conversation usually goes something like this:
Person A: A colorblind ideology is not useful! We need to acknowledge race, its history, and the role it plays in present reality!
Person B: By bringing up race, you’re the one being racist! Race shouldn’t matter! Remember, Dr. King once said that we should “not be judged by the color of [our] skin but by the content of [our] character.
Person A: That’s completely out of context! Dr. King saw race as a reality we must face . . .
Person B: [Interrupts] By bringing race into the conversation, you’re only distracting us from the real conversation we should be having. After all, White people can be discriminated against, but you don’t hear us complaining!
Person A: *Bangs Head Against a Wall*
The problem with this line of thinking is that it divorces the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a symbol from his lived reality as a radical, anti-war, socialist-leaning, anti-racist activist who recognized the intersections of oppression. Instead, he becomes a moderate, race-neutral man on a pedestal whose words can actually be used to argue against programs and actions that might realize social justice.
One of the things that is most striking to me about this issue, though, is that it is not a partisan trend. I find White people on both the left and right using this line of thinking. For instance, a White, leftist #OccupyOakland activist was recently arguing with Jay Smooth on Twitter about the ways in which colorblindness as a value within the movement is being used to silence activists of Color and their concerns. Jay Smooth was trying to make the point that it does not help the movement to have an attitude of, “Put aside our differences for the betterment of the whole.” In fact, that only can create resentment in the movement and doesn’t realize justice.
In response, the White activist had the following to say:
In essence, he was trying to use the words of Dr. King to argue why we should not be divided by race, but this fictionalized Dr. King is not the Dr. King of, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
On the right, I hear a similar logic. The logic from the right is often that conversations about race are, in themselves, racist because they “choose to judge people by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character.”
I saw this hijacking of Dr. King’s legacy clearly from the right in Newt Gingrich’s language on the holiday honoring one of the greatest activists for social justice.
In his speech “honoring” Dr. King, he discusses the Rev. Dr.’s passion, his faith, and his persistence. He asks people to “look forward” and “ask ourselves to what degree can we give to [young people] the same spirit of hope, the same idealism, the same belief in America, the same understanding that salvation comes from faith in God, and that together we can, in fact, create a dramatically better future for all Americans of every background.”
However, in the same day, a day that honors the man who helped lead the Poor People’s Movement, Newt had the following to say:
Not only is the former Speaker of the House of Representatives paternalistic and classist in his language, but he refuses to see how his racially-coded language could be insulting to Black Americans (and for that he received a standing ovation).
It is insane that someone could speak out of one side of their mouth lauding the legacy of an advocate for justice and the poor and out of the other side to put down the poor as lacking work ethic and as desiring food stamps over jobs while equating the nation’s first Black president as “the food stamp president.”
Whether from the left or the right, this sort of language does little more than defend what Dr. King called a “negative peace” where those who are oppressed must “passively accept [their] unjust plight.”
Dr. King had harsh words in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail for White Moderates like @geekeasy2 and Newt Gingrich, words that must give all White people pause:
“I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”
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Check out my post from last year’s Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Celebration: Forsaking the Dream – Reflections on the Vision of Dr. King.
