I think I have a lot of things I'm inclined to say, here (and am struggling a bit with putting them all into words).
One of the points that leaps immediately to mind is a post that a friend made on Usenet regarding men and feminism. At the point my friend had made her comments, some guys (Sensitive New-Age Guys, to boot) were stating that feminist anger about sexism was the key thing that was turning them off of feminism.
My friend argued (and I agree with her) that withholding their support of feminism until feminism acts according to their terms was a form of power. That making conversations about sexism comfortable for men was, while in some sense productive, essentially an example of how the master's tools are, once again, going to help improve the master's house.
And I think I see this conversation about racism much the same way. I don't claim to have done anywhere near enough anti-racist education, but I have observed how every conversation about racism I've had with white folks has had to spend an inordinate amount of time making white folks comfortable with even the implication that there might be less-than-perfect behaviours around race.
I see many, many people have knee-jerk reactions to words like 'privilege' or 'racism' and then use that as an excuse to not take part in the conversation -- I think that opting-out behaviour exemplifies a form of white privilege that's pretty icky. And pretty invisible to the people who are wielding it.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2008-11-07 01:51 pm (UTC)I think I have a lot of things I'm inclined to say, here (and am struggling a bit with putting them all into words).
One of the points that leaps immediately to mind is a post that a friend made on Usenet regarding men and feminism. At the point my friend had made her comments, some guys (Sensitive New-Age Guys, to boot) were stating that feminist anger about sexism was the key thing that was turning them off of feminism.
My friend argued (and I agree with her) that withholding their support of feminism until feminism acts according to their terms was a form of power. That making conversations about sexism comfortable for men was, while in some sense productive, essentially an example of how the master's tools are, once again, going to help improve the master's house.
And I think I see this conversation about racism much the same way. I don't claim to have done anywhere near enough anti-racist education, but I have observed how every conversation about racism I've had with white folks has had to spend an inordinate amount of time making white folks comfortable with even the implication that there might be less-than-perfect behaviours around race.
I see many, many people have knee-jerk reactions to words like 'privilege' or 'racism' and then use that as an excuse to not take part in the conversation -- I think that opting-out behaviour exemplifies a form of white privilege that's pretty icky. And pretty invisible to the people who are wielding it.