Bloody, But Unbowed

Emory Douglas/2016 (by permission)

It's taken me a while to catch my breath. That one-two punch last November was a doozy and though I've been meeting my responsibilities (which are many), my psyche went down for the count and has been lying on the canvas in the ring ever since, trying to figure out if I can make it to the locker room on these jelly legs or do I need to jump in a cab and head straight for the border. There's something to be said for living to fight another day.

I've been lying still with my eyes closed, as it were, reminding myself that this is not new news. White Supremacy. the patriarchy, capitalism, and a cold-blooded commitment to power held by a handful of old White men combined with an almost stunning lack of consciousness in the mass public over the past 250 years has delivered us to the present like an express train to hell. And for the last fifty years of that period, I've been watching it all unfold like a Grade B movie. Yet -- no matter how you've trained -- a well-placed upper cut that catches you off-guard can rock your world, even if you're the better fighter.

Still, as I often tell my students, it's not what happens. It's what happens after that. Watcha gonna do?

Why Am I Not Surprised? 2.0

Yesterday, I wrote on Facebook about what it feels like to be me when I'm isolated. Which is a lot. Being a White person who thinks like me and talks about it the way I do puts me consistently on the outside all the time. This is what I wrote:

"After 45 years of fighting White Supremacy in every way I can imagine, I am getting more discouraged by the day over where we are in this country (and the world). I know that a few White people are not enough. I rant though my courses. I can hardly face my blog on race because I want to scream at the top of my lungs. People think I'm a nut case because I never let up for a minute. But what good does it do? I get some love, but most folks think I'm crazy or too over the top or pushing too hard or trying to be something I'm not or a "traitor to my race" or...other things too wrong-headed to print. I don't know what to do and I see what the White power structure is doing and it's a SYSTEM not a bunch of individuals, so it's like trying to collect smoke in a sack. 

"I've been depressed ever since Ferguson because I see that those with the power to define in this country have created a situation where Black people have to risk and lay down their lives for what already belongs to them and I am so angry, so hurt, and so helpless in the face of it all that I'm borderline suicidal off and on, but I can't quit because I'm needed. 

My only son was murdered two weeks before his 23rd birthday so I know what it is to lose a child, but every time a Black child is killed or incarcerated or beaten up or disrespected, everything Africans have suffered since the first slave ship left port for the Western Hemisphere rolls over me like an ocean wave of grief. All I know to do is to work, to fight, to stand, to write, to speak truth, and not stop -- till I die."

But this morning, I want to clarify something. This struggle is not about being a conscious White person who feels alone. It's about what the White Supremacist system does to People of Color in the world and most particularly for us, here in the U.S.

Sam Adler-Bell: "Why White People Freak Out When They're Called Out About Race"

There's been some talk around of late about "White fragility." The person that got the talk started is Robin DiAngelo, author of What Does It Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy. Some folks believe that DiAngelo is suggesting White fragility as an excuse for White Supremacy because it's been discussed as a legal defense for crimes against People of Color.

You know me well enough to know that I ain't buying any legal defense that lets White people off the hook for attacks of any kind against Black people. On the other hand, sociologists attempt to explain (not excuse) what they see. And I have said for years that White people have been very negatively affected by their being allowed to live in la-la land where their disease of White Supremacy is concerned. The condition DiAngelo calls "White fragility" could be one example of that.

"White fragility" doesn't mean people that look like me are delicate (in a good way) and need special protection or consideration. It means they are easily freaked out because of believing they're "special." (You've heard me talk about this before.) That's why I get student evaluations that say things like, "She makes White men feel bad about themselves..." And why I had one White male student stomp out of class two days in a row this semester. And why they warn each other not to take my classes: "White fragility."

Just for the record, the person who came up with this concept is not a sociologist. Still...I'm sure there are a number of folks that will find this interesting and I do believe it can be argued that living for centuries under White Supremacy has caused some White people to succumb to a condition -- whatever we choose to call it -- not unlike those dogs that have been bred for centuries to be tiny and have become as a result, in the process, high strung, yappy, and prone to pee all over the place when they get excited.

What follows is an interview wherein Robin DiAngelo explains what she meant.

Jonathan Odell: "How I Overcame My Soul-Crippling, Deep-South Addiction to Whiteness in 5 Easy Steps"

Previously posted on Alternet, 7/25/14.

I am a Mississippian as well as my family’s most notorious drunk. But six years into sobriety, I discovered that alcohol wasn’t my only addiction. Even more insidious was my soul-crippling dependence upon whiteness. I couldn't get through the day without seven or eight stiff shots of feeling superior. That began to change when I decided to write novels about Mississippi. I knew very little outside the white-bubble in which I was raised, and therefore was blind to the story of nearly half the population. Only after interviewing hundreds of black Mississippians, listening to their stories, did I begin to fathom the immensity of the lie behind my superiority and the real cost of my addiction.

Brit Bennett: "I Don't Know What To Do With Good White People"

Re-posted from Jezebel (12/17/14):

I don't know what to do with good white people.

I've been surrounded by good white people my whole life. Good white people living in my neighborhood, who returned our dog when he got loose; good white teachers in elementary school who pushed books into my hands; good white professors at Stanford, a Bay Area bastion of goodwhiteness, who recommended me M.F.A. programs where I met good white writers, liberal enough for a Portlandia sketch.

I should be grateful for this. Who, in generations of my family, has ever been surrounded by so many good white people? My mother was born to sharecroppers in Louisiana; she used to measure her feet with a piece of string because they could not try on shoes in the store. She tells me of a white policeman who humiliated her mother by forcing her to empty her purse on the store counter just so he could watch her few coins spiral out.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: "We're Coming To Get Our Check."

This is a short clip that will help you to understand why Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot by an off-duty police officer to stop him from kicking off the Poor People's Campaign. At the time of this speech, the Campaign was gearing up to march poverty-stricken people -- of all skin tones -- across the country and right into Washington. The woman you see after the clip of MLK speaking is Black Panther Kathleen Cleaver adding her two cents worth.

Using Public Schools To Make Sure White Supremacy Continues

One of the things I pay a lot of attention to in the parish where I live is the fifty-year long process of refusing to racially integrate the public schools so that every student will get the same quality of education. By this I mean adequate books, libraries, equipment, fully trained culturally competent teachers and administrators representing all ethnic groups in the region, and school disciplinary policies that reflect a commitment to embracing all children to maximize their potential as future citizens. This is not currently happening and has at no point ever happened here, as 5th Circuit Judge Ivan Lemell will attest.

It's not reassuring to discover that we're not the only ones. And, unfortunately, it's not encouraging that we're hearing more about what is being called the "re-segregation" of the public school system nationally. I have long since realized that the public being aware of stupid, mean-spirited, classist, sexist, and White Supremacist practices and policies will do exactly nothing to fix social problems until that same public understands that these practices and policies are causing and will continue to cause problems for all of us in several ways.

Lindy West: "A Complete Guide to 'Hipster Racism'"

After two solid months of reading nothing to speak of but Facebook and "Tales of the City" by Armistead Maupin because I moved from one apartment to another -- downsizing by half -- while I was working fifty hours per week on my day job and keeping my hand in on some political organizing and some more stuff...I read this today (which I thought would knock me out and it did). There's nothing to do but re-post it here and hope nobody gets mad at me.

I considered letting it kick off a new feature under the category title of "Wish I Wrote This." But -- obviously -- I wish I wrote this because I'm re-posting it. With almost 3000 comments on Jezebel (where this appeared on 4/26/12), West doesn't need my help to put this out in the blogosphere, but I just want to make sure My Faithful Readers (who keep coming back even when I'm hiding out), get to see it. You're gonna like it. And some of us might learn something.

The Face of Racism

The last several days, I've been making my blog rounds for the first time in quite a while. I mean, I've dropped in here and there from time to time, but overall, nothing like I used to do. This blogging stuff takes time.

Anyway, the blogs I haunt are about the socially-constructed, political notion of "race," by and large. So, during my rounds, I've been inspired, entertained, informed, and unfortunately, horrified by what I read. And here are a few of the highpoints.

1) Ann at Beautiful, Also Are the Souls of My Black Sisters tipped me to stories about swastikas being burned into the lawn of a family in Merced, California, and a KKK newsletter being left on the porch of a bi-racial family living in Warren, Michigan.

2) Andrew Grant-Thomas at Race Wire wrote about race and poverty and how things cost more in poor neighborhoods, assuming they're available at all.

3) ZNet presented a Tim Wise essay on race and law enforcement, focusing particularly on how White privilege makes marijuana more of an option for White youth than for Black youth in a country that still (supposedly) instructs us all to "just say no."

4) M.dot at Model Minority wrote a blockbuster analysis of the point where hip-hop, capitalism and gender meet. I'm going to give students extra credit for reading this one.

5) Minister Faust at The Bro-Log talks about what he calls "blood chocolate" by introducing Carol Off's new book on the topic.

6) The Villager at Electronic Village posts a letter written by Ben Jealous, the national President of the NAACP, after he visited Troy Davis, an innocent man who's being threatened with eminent execution even as I write. Apparently, the mass media is clamoring to meet with Davis, but the Powers-That-Be are blocking any access to him that might wind up making them look like the criminals they are.

7) Over at the Huffington Post, Ann Medlock writes about the oil companies killing kids in Nigeria.

8) The award-winning editorial team at Sanctuary presents a statement on the travesty that occurred in the court when the murderers of Luis Ramirez were acquitted.

9) The newest edition to my blog rounds was RiPPa at The Intersection of Madness and Reality, whose writing reminds me of DNA when he was at Two Sense or maybe The Field Negro. RiPPa posted about Philadelphia, Mississippi, where civil rights workers were murdered and the KKK, according to a former mayor, was made up of a bunch of guys who were just doing their best to make the community a better place to live. Uh-huh!

10) And finally, Kai at Zuky did his usual breath-takingly elegant job of de-constructing (and explaining) what drove major world leaders (including Obama) to boycott the U.N. anti-racism conference in Geneva, Switzerland, last month (the problem of Whiteness). Quote: "[W]hiteness is not genetic; it's socialized, not inherited; though ironically, whiteness deploys a pseudo-genetic basis in its contempt for The Other. Whiteness is a socio-political construct and a fluid strategic ideology of power which has only existed for the past 5 centuries or so, during the era of racist globalization and colonialism. When I talk about the whiteness problem, I'm not necessarily talking about white people, I'm talking about whiteness. I'm saying that whiteness is a disturbingly unifying thread you can find running through many of the great problems of our time: environmental destruction, the war racket, famine, human migrations, curable yet untreated disease. Attempts to address any of these issues are severely hindered by whiteness; that is, by the existential drive of a global elite, profoundly informed by whiteness, to live in dominion over, rather than harmony with, humanity and nature."

Aren't Presidents SUPPOSED To Be White?

Last week, I posted a doctored photo of Sarah Palin in a bikini with a gun. Some people took one kind of offense or another and I ultimately removed it because it didn't really fit the topic arena of my blog anyway and, while I do that occasionally, I don't want to make that particular move lightly. However, as I made the rounds last weekend of my usual "race" blogs, almost everybody had several posts on this woman.

I don't have the time, energy or inclination to get neck-deep in this electoral process when I don't believe we've actually elected a President since Bill Clinton (and he was no prize, what with NAFTA and "welfare reform" and all). But Tim Wise (bless his heart -- I'm sorry, but ya gotta love this guy) wrote a piece on Palin I can 100% co-sign from Why Am I Not Surprised?. It's about what a poster child for White privilege Palin is. I'd post the whole thing right here except I think we all need to go on over to RedRoom and leave some decent comments on the piece. Now, go on. Do it.

Whiteness 101

I had an experience this week that was unexpected and, frankly, a little weird.

You know by now, I assume, that I teach sociology at a University and one of my courses this semester (which began this last Wednesday) is a course on Racial and Ethnic Relations. So far, so good, right? I mean, this is what I do, after all. And after twenty years of doing it, I know better by now than to ever think I'm not going to be thrown a curve every once in a while, especially when I've just changed schools. Besides, I'm a pro and I love what I do and periodic shake-ups keep us young (they tell me).

Anyway, my usual way to start my course in Race is to talk about how, according to scientists, "the socially-constructed, political notion of 'race'" is not biological. Then, I ask everyone to put themselves into a big circle in skin tone order (that's right). It isn't easy. They want to be compliant, but it's a request that immediately -- and even considerably -- raises the tension level in the room.

I keep up a stream of patter about the topic to keep us moving forward, bringing in "hair texture" as the next consideration.

"Do we place someone with darker skin and straighter hair BEFORE or AFTER someone with lighter skin and curlier hair?" I ask casually, as if we discuss such things in public all the time.

I don't actually expect them to answer. Nor do they.

Finally, I pull out some one dollar bills and bless each of the darkest five or six with one to keep, explaining that they're getting the money for having the darkest skin. The rest of the students, by now openly vulnerable, look disappointed.

"What's the matter?" I ask, pretending not to understand. "You don't like it when somebody is rewarded for an accident of birth over which they had no control? People that look like me receive far more benefits far more often than this."

Suffice it to say that it's a pretty effective exercise and a very dramatic way to begin the course, make my initial points, and get everybody outside their comfort zone where they will stay for pretty much the remainder of the semester.

The rest of the course is based largely on a process of showing very intense videos and requiring everyone to write out their reactions, which they turn in to me. Then, I pick and choose among them, reading aloud to the group sentences and paragraphs from different reactions (without identifying the writers other than by ethnicity). This gives the African-Americans, Asians, and Latin@s an opportunity to say exactly how they feel without having to worry about being personally attacked. It also gives the students who look like me an opportunity to hear it straight for once, in a setting where I can comment on and further contexualize what they are hearing. The White students can write exactly how they feel, as well, of course, but hearing it read back to them out loud and also contextualized helps them to reconsider their White Supremacist thinking.

So imagine my surprise and consternation Thursday when I walked into the classroom and saw 41 students, almost every one of which was European-American. I cringe to think of it yet.

I had no idea what to do. I had brought my dollar bills and the other things I needed for my usual opening volley. I was excited, though edgy about teaching race for the first time in Louisiana. But I was ready. And now, here I was, flying by the seat of my pants without a shred of warning and no do-overs. Whew!

We all lived through it, more or less, I suppose. I mean, some of the students had already had me for other classes and knew what to expect. In fact, some of them had taken this course expressly to see what I'd do in there. But even they couldn't make me more comfortable and help me through the glitch. I was dumb-struck. And, of course, when I'm nervous and free-falling and talking about race, things can get hairy for the listeners. (I'm smiling here, but I do know -- and I'm sure you can imagine -- I can get rough.)

Later, I went to a couple of former students, young people of color I trust, and asked them what they thought the lack of color among the students in that course is about. Talking with them, I came to realize that students of color in Louisiana have enough to deal with racially without volunteering to sit in a room twice a week listening to racist White folks defend their belief system. They couldn't possibly have imagined what I had in mind. So I got unintentionally hung out to dry.

To make matters worse, my department chair pointed out that while sociology majors at my institution are not required to take Racial and Ethnic Relations, criminal justice majors ARE. So, what I was looking at the other day was primarily a room full of southern European-American law enforcement professionals of the future. Oh, my.

(It didn't occur to me until this moment that the last three public universities I taught for all required that every undergraduate take at least two "multicultural" courses to graduate. Which gives me a really good idea...)

In the meantime, I'm going to have to draft a whole new game plan for this course in this semester. It'll look something like Whiteness 101, I guess.

Stuff White People Do

My ego is apparently supposed to be taking a beating this week. Nothing heavy, you understand. But when you were raised to have no self esteem and no sense of your own self worth, the ole ego grows like a weed in that garden.

Fortunately, I have reached a point in my development where my self esteem and sense of self worth are blooming along with my new alamanda vine, so my ego can stand the deflation (though I still feel the pinch and embarrassingly so).

Anyway, I'm probably the last one on the band wagon, having been in cognito, as it were, for the past few months. The blogosphere will fill a vacuum in a minute, I know. But last night, thanks to a comment by Professor Zero, I discovered a new blog called Stuff White People Do. The author is smart, right on the target, introspective and clever. He reads all the same books as I do, watches all the same movies, and shares many of the same opinions. And he's written almost as much in the past ninety days as I wrote all last year.

I was tired when I reached SWPD last night and after about an hour on the site, I decided that I'm no longer necessary to the blogosphere, after all (see what I'm saying about the self esteem and self worth?). Then, I remembered what I had learned the night before (see this post), so I shook off the feeling and just celebrated the blog.

There are a number of wonderful bloggers on my blog roll to the right. If I didn't think my Faithful Readers would get something special from each and every one of the them, they wouldn't be there. But if you haven't read Macon D. over at Stuff White People Do yet, then let me send you on over there post haste.

Just recognize that you're probably gonna be there for a while.

And don't forget about me, okay? ;^)
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The YouTube clip featured above is of Tim Wise talking about the origin of White privilege just like I do -- only better. I first saw it at Stuff White People Do. Of course.