The Changeseeker's Manifesto

If we are very fortunate as a human being, at some point in time, we reach a level of conscious awareness of reality. I do not use this word lightly, nor perceive it as a relative matter. Just because two beings are locked in mortal battle over a disagreement in perception does not mean that their realities are, in fact, different. One may see the matter as "red" and the other as "green," but the matter is either "red," "green," or whatever color it is, regardless of how either of them perceives it and no matter which of them wins the battle. I would argue that, however skewed the current paradigm on a given topic, reality is reality. Or as the Navaho put it, what is, is.

I believe that life is more important than money and that because of this, anything that prioritizes the production of capital over the protection, honoring, and sustenance of life on this planet is not only inappropriate and ill-advised, but insane. If we continue as a human race to sacrifice Life on the altar of Money, we will ultimately commit what Johan Galtung has called "mass, deliberate, collective suicide." Therefore, I seek ways to make this clear and to live my life on a daily basis rejecting as often and in as many ways as possible those principles and practices that maintain within me the continued addiction to consumerism, while placing those who "have" in a position of more value than those who "have not." And I do, thenceforth and forever, ally myself with those who work to live, rather than seek to destroy.

I believe that men and women are not gendered at birth, but that the patriarchal power structure that has been in control for thousands of years socializes us to perceive our Selves as specifically and particularly divided in characteristically stereotypical ways in spite of the fact that there is a clearly visible and widely-ranged continuum of sexuality that manifests itself in ways both bold and delicate. The idea that men are superior to women in any way, which is then used to justify male dominance and subjugation of women, is so couched in error and violence as to be maniacal. Therefore, I seek ways to make this clear and to live my life on a daily basis rejecting this definition of myself and others. And I do, thenceforth and forever, ally myself with all people who seek to present themselves as fully valid in their own personhood.

I believe that the socially-constructed, political notion of "race" was developed in the sixteenth century for the express purpose of the exploitation of people of color by those who inhabited the continent of Europe at that time and that this exploitation continues still--brutally, unapologetically, and with the realization of great wealth. As a person bearing the physical characteristics attributed to Europeans and European-Americans, I accept the responsibility of becoming ever more cognizant of this reality, ever more sensitive to its effects, and ever more committed to changing it. I do not perceive myself as worthy of particular benefits such as are bestowed upon me, often without acknowledgement or even awareness. And I find the pervasive nature of these benefits and the rationalizing forces used to suggest that they are reasonable both egregious and ignominious. The damage that has been done to and continues to be perpetrated against people of color is so unconscionable as to be unforgiveable. Therefore, I seek to make this clear and to live my life on a daily basis most humbly rejecting this system of White Supremacy and privilege in all its forms and manifestations. And I do, thenceforth and forever, ally myself with those who struggle against this system, regardless of what they look like or who they are.

I believe that all life is sacred and that not to honor it--in all its forms--is to disrespect and dishonor not only one's Self, as well as all that came before us and will come after us, but also the very Creative Source from which we spring. I believe that there are solutions to all human dilemmas presented at this moment around the world, once it can be established that life is sacred; that it is more important than money; that men and women and children are not roles to be played, but persons to be loved and respected; and that all humans--regardless of their appearance, their cultures, their differing levels of ability, and their socio-economic status--are equally beautiful, equally vital, equally necessary, and equally deserving of all the earth has to offer. And I believe that our survival is being threatened by those belief systems that do not recognize and codify these realities. I work to change the paradigms that are responsible for those threats. And I celebrate daily those who work with me toward the day when we can know that we are all--finally--free.
__________________________________________________________
The Mara Berendt Friedman poster featured above is available from the Syracuse Cultural Workers collective.

The Gates of Hell Book List

My last post was on the struggle of standing at the gates of hell where people--and most particularly young people--of all types, but most particularly young people of color are thrust by a society that does not appear to care that they are human and, in fact, seems hell bent, if you will, on seeing them founder there. Since I wrote that post, some books have come to mind that might be interesting to those who find themselves trying to be of service in such settings. They aren't many and I'll just list them here in hopes that readers will add other titles in the comment thread.

Failing Grades: How Schools Breed Frustration, Anger, and Violence, and How To Prevent It by H. Roy Kaplan

The Way it Spozed To Be by James Herndon

Understanding Black Adolescent Male Violence: Its Remediation and Prevention by Amos N. Wilson

A Kind and Just Parent: The Children of Juvenile Court by William Ayer

These books are very different from each other and I'm making no claims for how they may or may not apply to a given situation. I have not included the (too) many books I have found inspirational or instructive that were just about poverty, the inner city, disenfranchised youth, and so forth, because the man for whom I wrote the original post on the gates of hell is already well involved in that setting and after thirteen years probably could write a book himself. But I got special and helpful input from each of the books above and look forward to seeing what you might add to the list.

The Gates of Hell

With six courses to teach (which means 14 times per week in the classroom) plus being the advisor to the Sociology Club plus trying to seal down a permanent position so I can pay my rent for the rest of my life plus helping to plan an 8-day trip to Mexico over spring break AND beginning to learn Spanish plus trying to think about getting things published, I consider it a special day when I get to read a few posts on somebody else's blog. I remember fondly going from blog to blog last summer for hours on end and writing two posts in one day, if I was so inclined.

More recently, I was reaching a point where I wondered what it would take to force me to the mat again. It's not that I don't have topics. I keep a running list of blockbuster ideas I deem worthy and even needful of addressing. And I still have "A European-American Sets Me Straight" to finish...eventually. But I'm rushed in the morning, whipped at night, and running from activity to activity even when I'm home on a Saturday and refuse to get out of my red plaid flannel pajamas. Reading preparation alone for six courses is pushing me into a new pair of glasses.

Then, I checked my emails yesterday and found that I had a new commentator on my latest post.

"Howdy from Oklahoma," he began.

"My wife and I are high school English teachers in urban Oklahoma City high schools. My school is 70% African-American...[and] has all the problems of urban schools. Our students are 90% free/reduced lunch. We have a negative school environment, poor discipline, high absenteeism, high drop out, poor attitude. I've been here 13 years. Recently, I read that black males who drop out of school are twice as likely to be unemployed or in prison than they are to have jobs. So I feel that I can't give in to despair and that I have a holy mission to be here. But I wish I felt more competent. I know how to survive in my school, but I worry that my teaching is ineffective. I'd be glad to get whatever help you can offer me. Thanks, Lynn Green"

And just like that, I'm here. Nodding. Captured like a fly between the window and the screen. Mesmerized by his paragraph like a frog staring at a bonfire, instinctually realizing on some level that no rational person would make even the most well intended attempt to reply to this in public. The fire's too hot and I'm too small. Frogs get their gizzards cooked that way. I've seen it happen. What made him think I'd have pixie dust?

But the thought of Lynn Green standing at the gates of hell, catching bodies and minds and psyches as they fly by, is more than I can resist. Still, where do I begin? He's not really asking me for some kind of tidy answer. He knows better. He's just trying not to buckle under the weight of his holy mission and calling out to someone he thinks will understand.

Oh, Lynn. How do we wind up at the gates of hell anyway? It often feels so difficult--and on some days ridiculous--to keep believing that there's hope. We've been in this phase, after all, for nearly four hundred years. And rather than seeming to move in a healthier direction, it's apparent the blight has spread and is spreading. The forces of evil (if you will) move like a noxious fog over the face of the earth, enveloping more and more people and animals and trees. Much that is beautiful has been torn asunder and left for dead. And still we stand at the gates of hell, prepared to do battle as if we are not mortal, but rather some kind of mythological figure that did not name itself and cannot give up the fight because we never chose it in the first place.

Back in the covered wagon days, when I was going into prisons by court order to speak and counsel and serve, the men used to ask me, "Why are you doing this?" And I would say, "Anybody can do time. I'm just doing what I would hope someone would do for me, if I was locked up." But the fact is, I didn't know the answer. I was just being glib. Not that the answer I gave them wasn't true, but how did I come to know that? WHY did I want to do what I would hope someone would do for me, if the tables were turned?

For everyone of us standing at the gates of hell, there's a hundred thousand or more just schlepping along through life the best they can, thinking about remodeling the bathroom or trading in the car or planting a bigger (or a smaller) garden this year. And what's wrong with that? What's wrong with planting gardens or remodeling bathrooms? They earned it, didn't they? I mean, the poor (and the disenfranchised and the suffering and the wartorn) are always with us, aren't they? How does it get to be someone's holy mission to do something about it when there may be nothing to be done; that is, when there's no easy answer and it might all just get worse?

One thing's for sure: you don't volunteer for these gigs at the gates of hell. Nobody in their right minds by any popularly understood and accepted general standard would volunteer to put their heart on an altar on a daily basis and then set it on fire day after day while we miss many more than we're ever able to catch. We drop in exhaustion at the end of a trying day, only to arise and do it again, as if we had no perception of any other option. And when others say, "I couldn't do what you do," we think "I can't do it either. But I do..."

I look back over the different gates I've stood at--the prisons, the drug facilities, the juvenile lock-ups, the residential programs, the social service offices, the universities--and the faces come back to me like Botticelli paintings. The man who'd been in the hole for five years already in the dark side of a hill, leaning close to the bars and whispering "How do you learn to love again after you've forgotten what it feels like?" The bright-skinned Latino kid who wrote a play about the street and wouldn't discuss being forced to rob people at gunpoint to feed his mother's crack habit. The African-American kid who went back to detention for jumping a cop who was manhandling his friend in the courtyard of the facility--while the staff watched. The endless string of beautiful young women of color who admit with their eyes flat that they accept "dates" to pay the bills and buy their kids school supplies. The elderly African-American woman we found sitting alone in her dark, cold kitchen without food because she was too embarrassed to tell anyone her checks had been stopped and she didn't have anyone to help her. The college athlete forced to attend workouts at five in the morning, so he falls asleep in class, knowing no one really cares if he graduates. The Jamaican boy supporting six younger siblings who I saw stopped on the street by a police officer in broad daylight. I had worked with the boy in the past and just happened to be across the street to witness and then intervene as the officer proceeded to bounce the boy's head back into a brick wall every time he gave the "wrong" answer to a question. And where are they all now?

The schools are full of stories, full of pain. I used to tell "my" boys that learning to read is the most revolutionary act they could commit, but most of them did not imagine themselves to be revolutionaries. "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do," they would say, a sentence I had first heard in the prisons two decades before.

For a while there at one point, a decade ago, I'd have ten-minute conversations with a boy who literally couldn't say three words without using some kind of sexual term. So--for as long as he could stand it--we would practice having casual conversation. About television. Or the weather. Or some other equally irrelevent topic. The goal, of course, being to talk without the "F-word" appearing even once as a noun or a verb or an adjective. And he eventually managed to get into a slot at a vocational rehab program. But I found him in the adult Department of Corrections data base the other day and had to stop looking up names because, after locating three of "my boys" grown up, but in jail, it was starting to get to me.

I used to give them candy as rewards for reading, nutritional guidelines be damned. Snickers bars were very popular (I wonder if there's a commercial in that somewhere?). And that was before I saw "Dangerous Minds." When I brought mini-chocolate bars to my college classrooom once last semester, I thought of the boy who shut the blinds and locked the door so that no one would know I was teaching him to read. I had found a 70-page book about car engines at the second grade reading level and when he finished it, he announced, "That's the longest book I've ever read!" and then demanded immediately: "Where's my Snickers?"

One year, I asked a roomful of sixteen-year-old minority summer school students why they thought so many kids drop out and they decided that not being able to read is one big reason. They agreed that it's embarrassing to admit by the time you're a teenager that you can't do the work because you can't read the words. So kids "act up" and get thrown out of class to avoid the humiliation of having their "secret" known.

When I suggested telling the teacher in the class, they assured me that when they tried that, they are often brushed off with an unapologetic, "That's not my problem. You should have learned that already."

"It's not your fault if you can't read," I told them, "It's the system's. Everyone of you wants this or you wouldn't be sitting here. The school board is supposed to see to it that you're provided a basic education. And reading's about as basic as you can get. It would have been great if you'd been able to get it before now, but you have a right to this and you need it, if you're going to be able to live a decent life. So if you don't know how to read, walk up to your teacher and say 'I need to read!' And if they won't help you, go to an administrator and say 'I need to read!' Until you find someone that will help you, no matter how many you have to approach." Did they? I don't know.

I remember doing an interview on the phone once for a piece of research I was doing on gang boys. I was on the phone so I wouldn't risk compromising the kid by knowing what he looked like, depending on what he decided to tell me. He was an articulate African-American boy--fifteen-years-old--and seemed both mature beyond his years and quite intelligent. When he told me that he had dropped out of school, I asked him why and he said, "Because all my friends dropped out."

"I didn't ask you about your friends," I countered. "I asked you why you dropped out."

This time, he considered my question for a moment before answering matter-of-factly, "I got tired of being treated like I was stupid." And I thought to myself, "I'll bet you did."

I mentored him just the tiniest bit and he went back to school, graduated, and got a good job at the university, where--as an employee--he could take courses for free, which he did. Then, he got married and bought a mobile home, so I thought he had beaten the odds, but the last I heard, he was back in the streets. I don't know what caused him to fall back, but I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a young African-American man or woman in a racist society.

The bottom line, Lynn, is that standing at the gates of hell is a head butt on a good day. And for every success story, there's gonna be twenty or thirty or more you're going to have to watch get past you. But keep in mind that somewhere up the road, there just might be another person who's successful where you haven't been. And, besides, you don't know what all you're really accomplishing. Have you ever seen a tiny sprig of green climbing up out of a crack in a sidewalk? Your biggest job, in the end, is to plant seeds, seeds that you may never see grow, but that will grow just the same.

Often, when I speak to a group or even a single person, I will think to myself, "Now what do I want to put in this person's mind, if this is my only shot ever?" On one such occasion, a boy in a facility I was working for was about to be arrested for murder. Everybody knew that if he got word of it, he would go over the wall. And he was hard to talk to anyway. But I had to say something. So, I walked up to him in the courtyard, stood there a minute and said simply, "No matter what, change is always an option. You know that, right?" He looked me dead in the eye--something I had not seen him do with anyone yet--and said, nodding, "Yes."

Sometimes, that has to be enough.

Oh, Lord, I'm Back To School...

with little time to blog or visit blogs. Nevertheless, I want to point to a couple of things you should check out:

The first is "Freedom Writers." I expected it to be a re-make of "Dangerous Minds." All I have time to say is that it's better than that. Hillary Swank had the suave to stay out of the way and let the movie be the story of the kids whose work appears in the book, which I intend to buy. If you've been following my "How To Be An Ally" series, see this.

Secondly, Rachel introduced an excellent website this week called Understanding Race. It's a project of the American Anthropological Association and quite interesting. Kudos to Rachel for this.

Lastly, Peacechick Mary makes some important points here. They are not so much specifically related to race, but it's a short jump to understand the racial implications of her very astute and well-described observation.

"Yep! It's In There."

At thefreeslave, there are some serious statements being made. Huzzah, huzzah! I'm haunting that blog these days and you will, too, if you aren't already and you relate to what I write. Start with this post, for example, on White progressive resistance to accepting that one cannot be raised as a European-American in the USA without being infected by "the virus" of institutionalized oppression in the name of racism. Then, sample at will.

Oh, yeah, and don't miss the duets Maxjulian (thefreeslave) and Askwhy have been engaging in over there (such as this one). Music like that feeds the soul!

You're welcome. ;^)

Goodbye To The Monkey House

What seems like a long, long time ago, when I was a young woman blazing a trail through a life she made no attempts to control, I somehow came across "Welcome to the Monkey House" by Kurt Vonnegut and related in one way or another to almost every story. His ascerbic wit and magical thinking expressed for me the wildness of what I saw all around me, in which I was so anxious to participate.

"Welcome to the Monkey House" was not my first experience with this kind of relating to the written word and its authors. I still remember a very strange short story I read in the Saturday Evening Post when I was eight. By the time I was fourteen, I was writing very strange short stories myself. And at eighteen, I was reading the short stories in Playboy (who could afford the well-respected writers I wanted to read and anyway, I didn't know about The New Yorker at that point).

The first book I devoured was J.D. Salinger's "Raise High the Roofbeams, Carpenters, and Seymour, an Introduction," which I used like a Bible for the early years of my adulthood, which might explain why I hardly came up for air, burning the candle in the middle (rather than both ends the way ordinary wild ones do).

Don't get me wrong; I'm not blaming Salinger for anything. I just mean that his words lured me out of the mundane middle class sleepnotic state in which I was raised into a grander internal adventure. He woke up all my dogs, as it were. And some of them were given to rooting in garbage.

"All we do our whole lives is go from one little piece of holy ground to the next," he wrote. "He was kind of a paranoic in reverse; he suspected the universe of conspiring to make him happy," he wrote. The message I got: that words can reach out and talk to strangers. That you can blow them up like balloons and release them to float away endlessly. And that, once released, you can hurry to the next fire, the next adventure, the next idea, the next opportunity, the next balloon. Oh my God! I was so alive!

It was no accident to me that Vonnegut named his title story "Welcome to the Monkey House." It was decades later before I discovered sociology, but I still refer even yet to "the monkey house" of society, belligerantly refusing to explain to the hapless listener. Are we not, after all, just primates in cages of our own construction in a building we call home, having long since lost any ability to imagine or implement a freer, healthier, more joyful existance? Beating each other with thigh bones over food we don't enjoy and going in and out of heat, we manifest a reality I long to label--in spite of everything--a "little piece of holy ground." So I followed Salinger's pipe like the child of Hamelin I was and eventually found my voice, thanks to a man named Richard who had found his voice in a dark hole in a federal prison.

When I go back and read the revolutionary rhetoric being published under my name in 1972, my voice, amazingly, is the same. It is my voice, still. The same voice I use in the classroom or in front of any group. The same voice I use when I'm interviewed. The same voice I use with my friends, family, and students. On this blog. Even in emails and letters. I am sometimes quieter, less intense, but slip down the rabbit hole at a moment's notice, have learned to accept the floor giving way, have learned to accept the raised temperature, the amused expressions, the fact that some people follow me around for this. The fact that I sometimes feel as if I'm channeling some larger manifestation. The fact that I sometimes know I am. The fact that it doesn't matter. I'm not in control.

Would I choose this voice? There are those who suggest we do choose our adventures, and in any case, I wouldn't have it any other way. But I haven't always felt like this. There was a lot of pain at one point or another. A lot of it. And some confusion, too. And a good dollop of self-loathing, I think, at least for some years. Being in overdrive. Following the breadcrumbs with no idea whatsoever of where they were leading, but taking them as reassurance in a forest frightening, if not primely evil.

And now? It is 2007. I consider the surprises that came in the last twelve months, mostly pleasant and all pleasantly resolved. I consider the small triumphs, indicators, I have decided, that I am on the right track and moving in a direction that will likely bring new and greater triumphs. And I consider the guidance I have received from supporters that did not even exist twelve months ago when I started this blog.

This year there is every possibility that I will move far away from where I am now to a vastly different type of geographical location. I have been where I am now for nearly six years, which is average for me. I am hungry for a higher energy level or perhaps an even lower one--some change that will focus me more strongly on the task at hand--the reduction of institutionalized oppression in the name of racism against people of color in general and African-Americans in particular.

This year there is every possibility that I will move at least one and possibly two or even three of my books. I don't know how to explain the sense I have of this. I am entering my book on race to a creative non-fiction competition, but I'm sure there will be many others. I have already joined a writer's organization, paid the registration fee for their conference in February, reserved my room and even booked my flight, but that's certainly no guarantee of anything. I originally set as a goal to have 200 Word document pages of this blog in a year (toward eventual publication, I hope, as a follow-up to my other book on race) and I will reach that goal in a post or two, with much feedback that what I write is sound and valuable and maybe even startling (yay!), but that doesn't seal anything down. Still, there is a knowing in my gut that it is all coming to fruition.

In 2005, when I finished "Reduced to Equality," I had no idea that even excellent books can take years--and multiple submissions--to get published. Like a fresh recruit to the army of official wordsmithery, I was ready to go on the road, alert in my desire to show off my newly acquired commitment. I purchased clothing that would travel. I even bought a passport. And then I sat.

I was befuddled. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go, I mumbled in a disgruntled voice. I was supposed to be standing on a stage somewhere fighting the good fight against racial oppression. Forget that I was already fighting it. Forget that I had been fighting it for more than forty years already. Forget that I'm not a General, let alone a Commander-in-Chief, but rather more of a petty officer, as it were, just "waiting for orders." Forget that I have even yet personal issues that get in my way psychically. I was ready to move, dammit! But still I sat.

I went into something of a funk. Even refused to write anything but this blog for a while--months and months actually. Quit sending out my query letters. Played a lot of computer games. Threw myself into teaching in a way that screamed "avoidance tactic." But the shift has come anyway. I can feel it, though it's hard to explain rationally. What's going to happen? I'm not sure. But it's gonna be an interesting year, that much I know. And now that I've stopped chafing at the bit, I can eye the track a bit more evenly, shaking out my muscles, finally ready to run the way I've been prepared to do, not frantically, but with joy. It's going to be a very good year. Goodbye, monkey house; hello, yellow brick road.

Should New Acquaintances Be Discovered

I guess everybody's got their thing, huh? I spent my whole new year's eve so far reading the new Erase Racism Blog Carnival. And it's the best one yet. There's a few old favorites and a bunch of great folks I hadn't read before. Christina did a terrific job of putting it all together and deserves many readers.

Being as you won't probably see this until 2007 (snicker), I suggest you do yourself a huge favor and read it as your first act of the new year. It'll take a minute because there's more than a couple, but it'll be kind of like visiting folks on a holiday, going from house to house, shaking hands and sipping egg nog and bonding with those who wish us all well.

As for me? Well, while you're going from blog to blog, feasting on the hearty fare of speaking truth to power, I'll be dutifully posting a new blog entry for the new year--a year in which I wish us all the joy of growing, the satisfaction of knowing, and the blessing of peace.

Happy Holidays From The Big Apple

Happy holidays to all my regular readers. I am in New York City trying to eat myself into a larger size jeans, while I walk so much there's not much likelihood of that happening. I would love to do a real blog post from here, but I'm moving too fast to develop a real topic as yet. Still, checking my emails in a computer cafe across the street from Tompkins Square Park, I just had to say hi and wish you well and know that when I get home, I'll look at this post and remember everything...with great joy.

I did have coffee in Greenwich Village with another blogger. We talked about other stuff. Like ordinary people. Come to think of it, why am I not surprised? (Hey, Judd! It was swell to meet you.)

Blessings.

Any Questions?

"If we believe in the rebirth of our civilization...then clearly this renaissance must begin in the chambers of our own hearts...We cannot wait for society to change, or for our institutions to be renewed. We, as individuals, must assume responsibility for our own personal transformation."

~Georg Feuerstein

Why Am I Not Surprised?

Remember last summer, when I wrote here and here about racist practices of some fans at European soccer matches?

Well, here's the latest. At the time I wrote my earlier pieces, some suggested that the problem doesn't really exist. Apparently, they were wrong.

For White Folks: How To Be An Ally (Part 3)

Some years ago--quite a few, I think--I faced the fact that I like to talk. Rather a lot, actually. The issue was raised the first time soon after I started first grade (as in "Is a joy to have in class, but likes to talk to her neighbors"). It popped up again more painfully in the form of my own personal hazing as an incoming freshman during the hot minute I was in nurse's training when I was instructed to stand in the hospital cafeteria for a half-hour talking to a statue.

Anyway, through the years, my talking got me something of a reputation, but since I was good at it and often clever or funny or impassioned, I was tolerated and even encouraged, by and large. Particularly since I could really use the skill in front of the press or at a demonstration or when speaking before a mass audience or whatever.

Then my daughter came along and as she aged, she would shut the door between me as a talker and her as a listener sometimes. "Inner monologue, Mom," she would cue me in a flat voice on occasion when I was talking to myself while under the mistaken impression that I was speaking to her.

"You're doing it again, Mom," she would mention casually over dinner at a restaurant, "You're holding a conversation for which I'm not necessary--posing questions and then answering them yourself." (And yes, she really does talk that way. She did, after all, grow up with me and her also highly verbal older brother. We often sounded like a Neil Simon script, much to the amazement of outsiders.)

And over time, my training under her tutelage helped me to hone, I think (I hope?), my tendency to monopolize conversation too ruthlessly. I learned to rest a finger or two on my lips to remind myself not to blurt out my thoughts while someone else is speaking. And I started listening so intently that sometimes a speaker in front of a smallish group will wind up speaking almost entirely to me alone.

In any case, "voice"--verbal or written (and at one time, sung)--is crucial to me. It is breath. It is imperative. I can spend ridiculous amounts of time alone, and even in silence. But I must, absolutely must, be able to express myself somehow.

So maybe that's why I understood almost immediately when I was exposed some years ago to the idea that, as a person who looks like I do, it is my responsibility to serve sometimes as a bridge between African-Americans and my counterparts in the European-American community. For one thing, White people will sometimes listen to me when they won't listen to people of color. And if I can express even something of the exact nature of institutionalized oppression in the name of racism, then the listeners may find themselves more willing--and able--to listen to a person of color speak for themselves at some point.

In fact, I have been told through the years by a number of my African-American students that I caused them to see the realities of "the system" much more clearly than they had ever imagined them--even as people of color. And I am, frankly, thrilled by this, when it occurs. I imagine that it empowers them, even if it does come from me.

But decades ago, I was taught that part of serving as a bridge is to introduce my fellow-speakers of color. To share the stage, if you will. To prepare the minds of listeners and then, when I have their attention, to give up the lectern to one who might otherwise not have access to it. That this is part of my job as one who has a clue. As one who wants to make a difference. As an ally. And the process of doing this, of course, sometimes means that I have to shut up (saying this to myself, of course, in the nicest possible way).

Sometimes, however, I hear stories from African-Americans who are struggling with the ramifications of not being allowed to find--or use--their voice under circumstances over which I can exert no control. And it saddens me greatly. Feeling the way I do about self-expression, I can't even imagine what it must be like to live in skin attached to lips that are forever expected to be sealed. Or worse, are always expected to make White folks feel good or safe or superior.

What a nightmare it must be, as an African-American, to have your White boss say jovially with an eager look, "You didn't take that the wrong way, did ya? You know we don't see color around here!" Or to have somebody lean toward you warmly at a church function and say, "Now, if all the Blacks were like you, we wouldn't have the problems we have in this country, you know what I mean?" Or to have the mother of your new friend (who just happens to be White) reach over at a bar-b-que and ask curiously, "Would you mind if I touched your hair? It looks so soft..." All the time knowing that your response must be measured and controlled and a lie.

And from what I can gather, these situations are made worse by the fact that you can't always see them coming. And while being constantly vigilant can give you ulcers, if you let your guard down, you're sure to get spiked eventually. And if you respond too quickly--because your guard was down--the repercussions can be severe. A lost job. A lost friend. A lost opportunity. Exclusion. The look.

Now, I don't mean "the look" that White people use when an African-American comes unexpectedly through the door to apply for a particular job or shows up at a party where everyone else is White or walks into the restaurant with a White date and his or her White child. I'm talking about "the look," however imperceptible, that says, "Hold up there--you just crossed the line." The color line. Into the space that's reserved for grown folks. The space of respect. As demonstrated by African-American deference to White people. And that's a dangerous look. It can be just a warning. But it can also mean that you--or your spirit--is about to get lynched.

So, African-Americans learn early to avoid "the look." They second guess themselves. They be quiet unless spoken to. They learn to smile a tight little smile and nod or grunt or "Hmmm" to avoid actually having to tell a bold-faced lie to a White person who really believes that they are well-meaning, but will get their feelings hurt in a New York minute and react--either now or at some unexpected future moment--in a way intended to "put you in your place" whether they admit it, or even know it, or not.

One young African-American I know (I'll call him "A."), who's been running things by me for years now, dropped by with his baby son last week and, while I was wallowing on the floor with the youngster, told me about winding up in the trick bag (yet again) at his new job this time, which he had loved until last week. Basically, as the story went, a new White social worker had been hired and had made it clear within days that she will not go into "certain" neighborhoods (despite the fact that she's from New York City and, duh, is a social worker), that she considers her African-American co-workers "them" (as opposed to she and the boss who are White), and that, while she reserves the right to make thinly-veiled racist comments in the office to specific individuals, she will run to the boss in tears if she is confronted on it. The other workers of color just shut down in the face of the situation, but A. had called her on her behaviors, only to have her "rescued" by the boss who literally threatened A.'s job all of a sudden, since A. is now a "high-maintenance employee."

A. is disappointed and frustrated. He wants to love his job. He wants to do it well. He's a highly competent, highly educated, deeply caring man who would be a wonderful asset to any social work team. But now--instead of being able to focus on his work like the professional he is--if he wants to continue to pay his rent, he's going to have to buck and shuffle. He has to accept the gibes of a White woman and say nothing in return or suffer for it. And that's what I mean by loss of voice.

A day or two after I spoke with A., I got an email from another African-American--a woman, this time--who I'll call "B." B. wrote me because she had been attacked for her comments on a blog (not her own) and she was tired of always having to defend herself for calling it the way she sees it as a person of color. She's expected to be intellectual, reasonable, and understanding in her statements to White people whose gentle sensibilities are wounded by her attempts to protect herself--from their attacks. Excuse me? At the end of her email, having expressed her frustration, she even went so far as to ask me not to tell anyone that she expressed to me how painful it is for her to be stuck in this space of having to be a literary punching bag. She, too, is being prevented from using her voice.

Later that same week, an African-American student came to me to discuss entering a prestigious essay competition. The young man ("C.") is not one of my students, but he's bright and mature enough to know what's going on with him. Plus, he wrote me an email one time that was electric with his passionate commitment to social change. Nevertheless, it became quickly apparent that he had lost his voice somewhere along the line.

I spent two hours with C. the first night and two more the night after that, cajoling, encouraging, reminding, challenging. And finally he admitted that the only reason he was using the essay in question (on Latino immigration) was that he didn't want to appear to be "just another Black man whining about race."

"Who better to express the African-American reality?" I countered. "Who better to plead the case for racial fairness?"

The next day, a Saturday, I got another email from C.

"Thanks for opening my mind..." he began. "From adolescence to this moment, I have been so uptight...Today, I am letting go! Yes, for a change, I will allow myself to enjoy an EXPERIENCE...As you've encouraged, 'My stars shall all come out to show their sparkling glimmer.' I am aware that trials and criticism shall follow, but that's all part of the process, right? This is so awesome, and the train is moving and, finally, I'm a passenger on board. Your words have not fallen on deaf ears..."

I wept great sobs in joy for this young man. And for the incredible honor of being allowed to help him find his voice. And for the millions of other people of color--old and young, male and female, rich and poor--whose voices may never be heard or even used.

But let's face it, I have a peculiar place in society in which to operate. And a particular skill, perhaps, in operating there. How can others help people of color to find their voices?

Well, for one thing, you can listen--really listen. It's hard to find a voice you've never been allowed to use. And it's hard to hear with ears that have never practiced listening. But we can help each other, if we bring honest hearts to the task.

Then, you can validate the truth you hear by accepting its legitimacy, no matter now difficult it is to face, no matter how sad it is to look at, no matter how formidable the wall it seems to illumine, no matter how deep the chasm it seems to produce. You can say, "Yes. I hear you. Yes. It must be painful. Yes. It is immoral. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes."

And finally, you can sit beside the wounded.

I saw a quote years ago by a woman back in the sixties, a SNCC-member, I think, who said something about, "What it all comes down to in the end is one person saying 'I will sit next to you.'" A commitment so simple it can be made by anyone. Without training. Without education. Without planning. Without agenda. "I will sit next to you." When the tempers blaze and the tears come. "I will sit next to you." In the rain. In the sun. In the darkness of night. "I will sit next to you." We can share a sandwich. We can pass the dipper down the row. We can breathe the air of a planet that has waited five hundred years for these words: "I will sit next to you."

In 1963, Anne Moody, the author of Coming of Age in Mississippi, probably one of the single most important books ever written by a U.S. citizen, having already spent years of her youth risking and losing everything but her life, walked into a Woolworth's in Jackson, Mississippi, and sat quietly down at the segregated lunch counter with two friends, one European-American and one Native American. It was the beginning of the end of racial segregation in America.

As angry White men pushed, struck, poured catsup, mustard and sugar over the heads of, and spit on Anne and her two allies, John Salter and Joan Trumpauer, they sat--together--and unleashed a power that could not be denied. They sat, silent, and were heard around the world. Eventually, we, too, may find our collective voice. But it will only be when everyone gets to speak.

As "The Twig" Is Bent

When the University of California Southern Branch was established in the 1920's, it wasn't immediately apparent that it was going to have problems dealing with the socially-constructed political notion of "race." In fact, Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity and Delta Sigma Theta sorority chapters appeared on the campus the very same year "the twig," as it was nicknamed, conferred its first undergraduate degrees. Four years later, in 1927, Ralph Bunche (the renowned African-American who eventually won the Nobel Peace Prize) was valedictorian of his graduating class there. So what happened at this school--now known as U.C.L.A.--to result in an incoming freshman class of 4800 students in 2006 with only ninety-nine African-Americans? That amounts to just a hair above two per cent. Out of all the potential students in the United States. Two per cent of the incoming class. Every time I say it or write it or even think it, my head shakes automatically, as if I'm trying to jar the math cells in my brain, which have never been overly proficient and must surely have finally dimmed out unexpectedly and entirely now. Hmmmph.

I might have missed this information in that I don't get around the blogosphere much any more and that used to be where I got my news, by and large. But Friday, one of my colleagues mentioned it casually in passing and I've been gasping ever since. What?! I keep saying like the poor befuddled student in "Pulp Fiction" just before he gets shot by the hit man because he keeps saying "What?"

What?! Ninety-nine out of 4800? What?! Does not compute. Does not compute...

Not surprisingly, the chancellor of the university, along with the faculty, the administration, the students, and the alumni are all calling the situation a "crisis." Well, no kidding. Garbage stinks, even fresh garbage, and this blatant manifestation of institutionalized oppression in the name of racism is far from fresh. I remember one time in my childhood how shocked we all were, standing around the kitchen in the giant old house we had just moved into, when several sizable rats leapt out from under the sink all at once as the cupboard door was opened. Looking back, there's no way a house that big and that old wouldn't have rats, but we were all still shocked.

The situation is being blamed on Proposition 209, the constitutional amendment passed nine years ago in California to prohibit public institutions from discriminating on the basis of race, sex, or ethnicity. It's so obviously racist as to be embarrassing even to generally oblivious White folks. But it passed with 54% of the vote. Ain't power grand? And here we are with exactly the kind of result that was intended: shutting African-Americans off from the benefits privileged people have always been able to take for granted.

Well, gosh, say those who support Proposition 209 (which has been doggedly ignored by many private institutions and employers and the subject of a number of lawsuits), what could be more fair than letting quantifiable merit decide everything--right? Yeeeeaahh...on the surface...but there are several glaring problems with this practice.

First of all, quantifiable merit is not in and of itself all it's cracked up to be as a performance predictor, which is well recognized by college decision-makers. I mean, I've got a fairly good brain (for example) and handily dispatched most of my Ph.D. level courses, but I only scored 500-something on the math section of the GRE (the graduate-level standardized exam typically used to determine admittance to grad school). Was that good enough to get me into FSU? Apparently. Because my verbal score was pretty high. But let's face it now, there are people who manage to hit 1400 with their combined scores. So if FSU hadn't taken into consideration my straight A's at the Master's level, my maturity (simply for being born earlier than others), and what they called my "creativity" (a very non-quantitative commodity), I would have never made the cut.

So, what's wrong with that? If we're only going to be educating the creme de la creme (oui?), then other folks--of whatever skin tone--will simply not be educated...or employed...or whatever.

But wait. How did the creme de la creme get to be that? Are they all just born geniuses? Actually, even a genius who doesn't get a good solid preparatory education is not going to fare well when the die is cast.

When I transferred from one middle school to another, for example, I told my school advisor that I didn't like math (even though I had been taking advanced math at my old school). The advisor, probably in view of the fact that I was a girl and therefore, of course, not a "math mind," said, "Okay. Just take chorus instead." I never took another math course until I faced statistics in graduate school. And while I passed it--somehow--I couldn't understand it because I had no context into which to put the information. I was taking third year Spanish, as it were, after skipping the first two years. Memorizing the syllables might get me through the course, but I wasn't learning the language and wouldn't use it after the fact.

How does this story relate to Proposition 209? Well, if I'd been a boy back there in middle school, the advisor would more than likely have said, "Look, you don't have to like math. Just learn it. You're going to want to go to college one day and you won't be able to pass the SAT if you don't know math." And I would have taken it and been prepared when the time came years later for me to ante up in grad school. But I wasn't, all because I was born with one set of genitalia instead of another. And sex, if you'll recall, is one of the factors they can't discriminate against any longer in California.

Still, I didn't start out talking about gender, did I? No, but it's the same dynamic. Public elementary, middle, and high schools in poor neighborhoods tend pretty graphically to be so underfunded and loaded with social problems of all kinds due to poverty and its attendant miseries that even a genius might be hard put to wind up well enough educated to compete with those who don't live in poor neighborhoods. And this would be only a class issue, rather than a race issue, except that African-Americans and Latinos are far and away more likely to live in abjectly poverty-stricken locations and be "educated" in settings that would drive White folks into the suburbs, which is exactly where they have gone.

So little Jamal and little Maria reach college age, but not necessarily college capability. And, because they haven't been prepared to compete, they are summarily excluded, no matter how bright they may actually be, given half a chance and a modicum of assistance. How handy for the White kids who have not only had the necessary educational preparation, but have a clearer path since they're virtually the only ones on it.

Of course, Proposition 209 doesn't seem to keep the star African-American athletes out of U.C.L.A., even though only 27% of them manage to graduate (a rate even lower than Louisiana State). And one can only be glad that young White men like George Bush will still get into Harvard and Yale, just as he did (even with his C+ grade point average), because they sure as hell wouldn't get into a school where quantified merit made the decision. And then where would we get our future leaders?

It's An Honor And A Privilege...

Now that I'm on a roll, I can't seem to slow down. Yay! And as I revel in my return to the blogosphere, I'd like to present for your continued enjoyment, a triad on privilege:

The Angry Black Woman offers Things You Need To Understand #4.

Kendall Clark's Defining White Privilege on WhitePrivilege.com, which is apparently defunct now, is still pertinent, so pertinent.

And bringing the noise for a resounding finish, BlackAmazon nails it (once again) with her Cover the Basics.

God, it's good to be back!

Let's Have Some Fun

If you're looking for something from me as to why I haven't been here for five weeks, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. Of course, I'm busy. Of my 79 students, I've had in-depth sessions with a third of them. I started a Sociology Club on campus in the attempt to get the pot off the floor and back onto the stove with a fire under it. I'm kicking off a Sociological Film Series (for the same reason) and did my homework to host a series of sociological speakers for the spring (myself included, of course). I'm on campus five days a week and doing a new prep for a course I'm making up as I go along (which means lots and lots of reading). I'm already working on my courses for next semester (choosing books and such). And I've started learning Spanish in my spare moments so I'll be ready to visit Mexico in the spring. But it wasn't being busy that shut me up. And I wasn't sure what it was.

That is, I wasn't sure until I got a hint on Friday when I met a man named Pat button-holing people outside the library on campus. With the energy of a big city street hawker, the face of a grandad, and the attitude of a circus clown, he only let go of the couple he was talking to before me once he had taken me hostage. And you know it ain't easy to take me hostage. I have a way of either extricating myself or returning the favor. I latched on.

It turned out that Pat had once been a monk--for considerably more than a decade--and he lives somewhere off campus now and just putzes around getting into mischief. He serves as a liaison between two schools ("I represent each to the other, so I wind up talking to myself.") He quickly beguiled me (and when you're being beguiled by an Irishman, you're being beguiled) with tales of successfully picketing with migrants to win union concessions, organizing students into doing loving acts for no pay-off (my favorite!), and founding orphanages for boys in trouble. "I had fun doing this for a while," he would say, "and then I had fun doing that for a while..." And everything he does is fun. A lot of it.

I found myself pausing ruefully to admit that I had begun to see everything I was doing as work. And I was reaching a point that I didn't like any of it any more.

"You gotta have fun!" he bubbled (the man bubbles, I tell you--it crossed my mind when he first captured me that, angel or not, he must be manic or something, but after awhile, I no longer cared--if that's manic, I need me some). By the time he let me go, some thirty or forty minutes later, I felt different.

And here I am. I've read. I've watched videos (on capitalism, for classes). I've studied Spanish. I've sniffed the internet for a position at a new school next year (oh, yeah! I wanna do this again!) And here I am. Swilling coffee so late, it's probably gonna keep me up all night long. But here just the same. Writing. Re-connecting. Dancing, as it were. Having some fuckin' fun. Yes, indeedy.

See, the thing is: when I came to this new campus, I was under the impression that I had to prove something to somebody. That I was somehow inadequate to the task. That I had to make up for lost time. That I had to "figure it all out." Yesterday. And it was not fun.

Then, a few students that I wouldn't have liked at any school showed up in one of my classes and since I was busy trying to "figure it all out," I thought I had to "reach" them. I know damned well you can't teach a pig to sing. But I thought I had to. Somehow. What a bummer. And so unnecessary.

Anyway, the students won for a while. I let them steal my joy. I mean, I've seen these self-righteous, little over-incomed/super-entitled/madras-wearing lacrosse players before. But normally, I just tune 'em out. That is to say, normally, I manage to tune them out. This time, they were so in-my-face, so bitter, and so unapologetically closed-minded, that I let them become every establishment authority figure I had ever been cowed by. (I know, I know. It doesn't seem as if I'd be easily cowed. And I'm not. I've faced down some real scary people. But that was always fighting for somebody else. When it came to fighting for myself, I didn't always--or even necessarily usually--have what it took.)

I knew I had the ultimate upper hand. Eventually, the ring-leader humbled himself to the point of admitting that he was willing to "do whatever it takes" to pass the class and even mentioned, by way of explanation, that he doesn't agree with the things I say, so he blocks out what he needs to be learning. I told him I could work with that, but it didn't make me feel any better.

Then, that afternoon, walking across the campus, which is beautiful, wearing my red and black argyle sweater in the sunshine, it occurred to me. Of course, they buck. I'm flying in the face of everything they think their future is founded on. And they could be right. They've never been forced to really consider this kind of stuff before, let alone forced to be graded on whether or not they got it, and here they are. If I think I'm miserable, just imagine how they feel, I thought.

Then, I remembered the juvenile delinquents I used to work with down in Miami and the way I used to train others to work with them. "Watch their feet," I used to say. "They'll grumble and mumble and call you names, but in the end, if they head generally--however slowly--in the direction you've indicated, then let 'em grouse. What difference does it make? They have to save face. They're giving up their power. You're winning, so can't you afford to let the silliness slide?"

All I have to do, I thought, walking toward the library in the sunshine, is just lighten up on the rein a little and ride the bull the way I know how. And then Pat reached out and grabbed my hand and said, "Hi, how are you today? I hope you're having a wonderful day." And by the time we parted, I was. And I have been all week-end. And I expect to be tomorrow. And I can hardly wait until Thanksgiving when I have a whole nine days to call my own. You better look out. I'm back. ;^)

Is Sociology Part Of The Problem?

As my faithful readers know so well by now, I am slow, slow, slow to post these days and only flit in and out occasionally to comment on this or another blog. I graded papers week-end before last and fully intended last week-end to pick up where Ms White left off with A European-American Sets Me Straight (3), which I will surely get to shortly, I hope. But in the meantime, coming on-line with the best of intentions, I dropped by Clampett's blog and found first, a very funny, if typically outrageous, Chris Rock film clip on how African-Americans can avoid getting beaten by the police, and then, second, a link to an article by one Patrick L. Cooney, Ph.D., on racism.

The back story, of course--and there often is one, I guess--is that my Ph.D. dissertation which I worked on in 1993 and 1994 and which has gone the way of all uncompleted treatises, was entitled "On Rationalizing Racism: Institutionalized Oppression in Sociological Writings on African-American/European-American Relations." So, I was an instant sucker for Dr. Cooney's piece, subtitled "What if Black Muslim Kahlid Mohammed earned a PhD in sociology?". He almost instantly threw a couple of lobs at sociology as a perpetuater of racist thought processes and generalized practices, so even though it was long and sometimes arduous, especially at first, I couldn't help myself. I had to read it. And then I started making notes and now here I am--four days later--and Ms White is back on the back, back burner, as it were, once more.

Now, I'm fully aware that many of you will not read the article, especially when you wade through its opening paragraphs, but for those of you who can, I recommend slogging through it till you get to the good parts, which get better and better as he goes along, I thought. And in any case, he raises some issues I think are important, though I will also criticize the piece, as well (surprise!). But before I begin, please remember that I am not, repeat not, repeat (for goodness' sake) not! a scholar. You can talk bad about me behind my back or disregard what I have to say or put rabbit ears behind my head just before my picture gets taken. I don't care. I'm not trying to convince anybody of anything (hel-lo!). I'm just saying my piece. Those who sputter about my lack of credentials or scholarly publications can, well, suck an egg, for all I care. Including Cooney, who apparently feels that we should all talk nice to each other. I tried that. Nobody listened. Nothing changed. And I got a rash. Now I'm a fatmouth. Several people listen. And, at least, while I'm still waiting for change, my rash has disappeared, so as far as I'm concerned, I'm ahead of the game.

I agree with a number of Cooney's points, as I already said, but right at the outset, I wasn't sure I would. For example, he began by calling old guard racists racist. Then, he called "neo-racists" (those who come at it more "subtly") racist. Then, he called "racial separatists" (those who think the only way for ethnic groups to be okay is for all groups to be separate) racist. And finally, he called even "multicultural separatists" (those who think all ethnic groups are okay, but need to be free to establish themselves on their own terms) racist. In other words, pretty much everybody's racist, in his opinion. Except him? It's a little hard to tell. But regardless, this has everything to do with what one means by racism. It's like bandying about any other label. It all depends on what you mean by the term.

If I hand you a can of something and the label on the outside says that it's "sliced peaches," how do you know it's peaches? You assume the label is correct. But when you open the can, you're gonna know, right? Because you know what sliced peaches look like and you know what they taste like. It's a no-brainer. Unless, of course, you open it and it's beans or applesauce and the label wasn't correct.

And what if the outside of the can has no label? Then what? It could be anything. And I could put any label I want on it and, if I'm adept enough, I can convince you that it is what I say it is. Unless you open it and identify it as something other than what I labeled it.

What makes a "peach" a "peach" anyway? Social consensus. We all agree that a juicy fruit with sweet, yellowish flesh, a fuzzy skin, and a big hard crinkly pit in the middle is a peach. Or a melocoton. Or a peche. Or a pfirsich. Depending on what language we're using. Get my point? It all depends on where you're coming from. I, for example, posit that your own personal prejudices are not particularly relevant unless you have the power to do something with them--from a position of dominance. Using that definition, an African-American--who can certainly be prejudiced against or even hateful toward "Whites"--cannot be "racist." They don't have the power.

Toward the end of his article, however, Cooney discusses how some African-Americans internalize the values of the racist paradigm in the United States and then develop a racist orientation, even participating in the racist agenda (a la Condi Rice, for example?). He calls this being racist, and on this, we agree, though I had never considered it in this light before. I refer to internalized oppression often, but I had not called it "racist" because of the confusion this would undoubtedly create for people who would not choose to understand the nuances involved. Still, to put the racism of "White" people who appear to benefit from racist attitudes and practices in the same pot with the internalized racism of "Black" people who appear to benefit from them because they are rewarded for doing so by the "Whites" would seem to ignore the complexities and the dangers in how this discussion might be used. Also, the "racism" absorbed and manifested by African-Americans requires them to see themselves as inferior and I would argue that a great number of those who have found it necessary to "work within the system" (as Cooney calls it) may have absorbed some very self-destructive perceptions and perspectives, but nonetheless, at the base, know Whitey's not superior and White supremacy is a lie.

Another early point Cooney makes is that "liberals" (whoever they are, because he doesn't define the term) are racist without meaning to be because they're busy trying to be "politically correct" and miss what racism really is. Actually, I don't disagree with this except that Cooney sometimes seems to be calling all sociologists "liberals" or all those who push "political correctness" "liberals". And that leaves out more than a few folks. That is to say, I'm a sociologist, but I'm far left of anything he could rightly label "liberal" (and possibly far left of him, though he likes to refer to his politics). And I'm unconcerned with being "politically correct." Particularly when you consider what the politics in this country are these days.

I believe in respect. I don't just believe in "talking nice." Those two things are not mutually exclusive, but they are not necessarily interchangable either. The term "politically correct," in fact, has been used (as is typical) to create a buzz-word backlash, as if calling someone a pejorative term as a means of robbing their personhood is the same as ridiculing somebody's ideas when they have had plenty of opportunities to change them and rather choose to still see others as beneath them--whether they admit it, understand it, consciously compute it or not.

So I see Cooney as making a mistake when he appears to lump "sociologists," "liberals," and "multiculturalists" into one big amorphous ball of contradictions and then proceeds to talk bad about them, saying they try to censor those they oppose. He writes that "...they believe in enforcing what has become known as politically correct multicultural ideas and speech. They are so biased that they do not realize they are often engaging in emotionally abusive language and behavior..."

But who is he talking about here? Sociologists? Liberals? Multiculturalists? All of them? Just the ones who say or write things that make someone uncomfortable? Dr. Cooney says much by the end of his article that would make some folks apoplectic. Does that make him emotionally abusive? You can't have it both ways. One has to assume that he has no bone to pick with sociologists who agree with him. And nobody on the left has wanted to be called a liberal since 1968. And what, precisely is the problem with letting folks decide for themselves where they want to sit? Is that racist because it hurts White folks' feelings? Later, he emphatically holds that it's appropriate for White folks to be afraid of African-Americans because of what continues to be perpetrated against people of color in the best interests of the White power structure, even if poor European-Americans get short shrift, too. But, at least in his opening, he seems to suggest that none of that matters. What matters is that everybody ought to be forced to hang together right this minute whether they feel ready to do that or not. Excuse me?

Sometimes Cooney makes statements I find problematic. For example, he refers at one point to Nathan Glazer's idea that "we have moved to the situation where the government ha[s] taken on a commitment to facilitate the maintenance of the ethnic heritage and a commitment that requires that school authorities take into account ethnic and linguistic differences in education..." and he attributes this to the influence of the multiculturalists. But the government is nothing more than a tool for those who have the power to define, in the strictest structural sense (and Cooney is into structure), so how does that become something we should fault multiculturalists for? I hope he's not calling the White power structure and its governmental appendages multiculturalist. It does its damnedest to prove otherwise.

Almost immediately after this, he mentions in passing that "...in terms of culture, [B]lacks were pretty assimilated...", and while you do see African-Americans everywhere in the U.S., I wonder what most African-Americans would say about how "assimilated" they feel on most days.

Then, when he flatly states that "Afrocentrist writings are just the silliest of the poor quality of the new research parading as scholarship," I am left wondering yet again: would this be all Afrocentrist writings all over the world for all time--even the Afrocentrist writings that are hailed as brilliant or win awards or whatever? There must surely be some Afrocentrist writings he doesn't find "silly." And if that's not true, if all Afrocentrist writings are, in fact, "silly" to him, I would suggest that he's missing an ability to get outside his Eurocentric paradigm far enough to know the difference.

And speaking of paradigms, what passes for "scholarship" is typically determined by the social scientific era in which it appears--and who's in the catbird seat in that field and in that era. The work of the "criminologist" Caesare Lombroso (who believed he could predict criminality based on body characteristics) was touted as "scholarly" for one hundred years until it was de-bunked as unscientific mumbo jumbo. And Galileo spent his whole life in house arrest for holding the "unscholarly" view that the world was not flat...?

I would hasten to add, here, that I am not trying to censor Dr. Cooney, a concern he has when strong statements about paradigm get made and appear to shut down what he apparently sees as the process of dialogue. (He particularly criticizes, for example, academics ridiculing in front of other academics statements of some of their respondents that demonstrated the racist warp and woof of our society.) But I would argue that what we are seeing is not censorship, but a collapse of one set of paradigms and the introduction of another.

According to Kuhn's theory of scientific revolution (which, as far as I know, has not been thrown out with either the baby or the bathwater, as yet) no one inside the proverbial box is ever comfortable with the noises made by those who, through whatever accident of thought or history, wind up placed outside it and still conversant. Did Galileo have a responsibility to "rationally" argue with his "colleagues" when they had him locked away? Would they have listened? Their action in sequestering him suggests even at this late date that they didn't choose to know what he was saying. Do you suppose that he might have cracked jokes about them to the few who would drop by to talk? According to both Lyford Edwards (in The Natural History of Revolution) and Alberto Melucci (in Nomads of the Present), ridicule of those in power and of those who support that power is not only typical in a pre-revolutionary society (or social science?), but is actually one of the techniques of "making the power visible" so that, as Foucault would say, a strategy of struggle can be developed and espoused among those who are listening.

I found particularly well presented the section entitled "White Racism Ignores Sociological Racism." It discusses how the mainstream U.S. "White" population came to see the socially-constructed, political notion of "race" and African-Americans as a people the way they do today, outlining quite nicely the effects of Moynihan et al in this process. Nevertheless, he himself in one sentence refers to "political scientist Edward Banfield and black sociologist Thomas Sowell" as if mentioning Sowell's skin tone was germane to Cooney's point. And therein lies the rub. Cooney and I and everybody else in the social science universe function within the context of our training, our mindset, and our paradigm. Much as we fight to see ourselves as outside it or able to observe it from a vantage point of some kind, our inability to stand apart, to avoid the very personal effects of our evolution during a particular period of history and in a particular culture will out. There is no moral high ground. We are all brothers (and sisters) under the skin.

But after this point, Cooney begins pulling out the stops, if you will. "Racism in America," he writes, "is more important than capitalist inequality in damaging the American system, although both factors work hand-in-hand and reinforce each other to cause the damage." "...[I]nstitutional racism is a way of avoiding putting the blame where it belongs: on the real, deliberate and active racism of white middle class people," he continues. "It would be a great redistribution of income from whites to blacks in order to equalize the races. And there would be very little willlingness on the part of whites to sacrifice economically to make these changes." Well, no shit.

"...[R]acism affects every part of American society and politics. The disciplines of all social sciences are involved, and these cannot possibly be found in a survey of a group of American citizens," Cooney suggests flatly. And he holds that the idea to which Moynihan gave birth that African-Americans have the same opportunities (today) as any other U.S. citizens, but are just broken people and cannot rise to the occasion is used to "absolve whites of any guilt over possible white immorality."

But then he'll add something like "the perspective of white racism creates unnecessary paranoia among minorities." I must be misunderstanding the man, since I don't see any level of paranoia among people of color as "unnecessary" the way things are. Unfortunate, maybe; crippling, certainly; but unnecessary? Talk to the surgeon from Florida who went to L.A. to present at a medical conference, but who was arrested for some specious reason and placed in hand-cuffs so tight, he'll never do surgery again. Paranoia is reasonable among African-Americans. Statements by social scientists are not irresponsibly whipping up an inappropriate response in people who would otherwise feel safe.

But when he calls racism a "social destroyer," he's right up my alley again. "Whites," Cooney claims, "are...actively engaged in pretense, lying, dissembling, hiding their real racist feelings, etc." And I would add: ashamed of this, as well, because they know it. They just don't want to say so.

"Racism," he continues, "is not just a part of U.S. culture. It is the main cause and primary ingredient of America's puritanical and moralistic culture. Racism is not as American as apple pie and motherhood. Rather America is racism. The American stress on puritanism is the result of racism, not vice-versa...Whites want to be racists. It is in their interests in the short run (which is the only time frame they are concerned about) to be racists." Here, I was with him hook, line and sinker until he reached the last sentence, which I disagree with because I think racism only appears to be in the best interests of "White" people. How can doing damage to other humans with which one has to live one's entire life possibly be in one's best interests--even in the short term? Making enemies among one's housemates is patently stupid. Which is one reason I'm so aggressive with those European-Americans who whine about how harsh I am. They're agitating people I live with and I, for one, don't like the fall-out.

Which brings me to yet another bone of contention. As he winds down his treatis, Cooney uses Huey P. Newton (one of the founders of the Black Panther Party who ultimately marked himself as an abuser of women and drugs) as an example of the "type of people" that "liberals" of yesteryear (who are the multiculturalists of today, he says) supported. And he suggests that this is what is wrong with sociology. My response to that would be, yes, and who would you have supported, Dr. Cooney, since you don't sound old enough to have been there?

Huey P. Newton was the product of everything Cooney outlines in his article. The expectation that African-Americans could and should live under the kind of nightmare Cooney describes so well, but not respond to it accordingly, was--and is, I might add--exactly why some European-Americans who were there in the sixties supported the Panthers, and even Newton. Not because he was a "homocidal psychopath," as Cooney puts it, but because of why he was one.

Some of those who were active in one way or another in the 1960's and 1970's became so precisely because they felt that it was time to face the true repercussions of oppression against people of color (and others) even though many had no idea how to "be for real" about it all. We were scared, but we were not ready to try to tell somebody how we thought they had a right to defend their lives. It was not our pain. It was his (and theirs). And if he was crazy (and he was), we had made him so. Not just the system, as Cooney says, but us. "White" people. Some of whom still wanted to tell Newton, in particular, and African-Americans in general, how to present their case. By now, racism may be relatively easy to analyze for someone who has a clue, but the remedies will be complicated indeed, and will not, I suspect, be drafted by people that look like me, however intellectual, well-meaning or not.

When he castigates those who try to find their identity and personhood through loving their ethnicity, Cooney misses the point entirely. And calling this effort, which is never entered lightly because it is a often a painful process in many ways, "ethnocentric" suggests he doesn't even understand the term. Ethnocentrism doesn't mean I have pride in my heritage or that I love myself as a product of my history. Ethnocentrism means that I think my ethnic group is superior to others. People of African (and Latino and Asian and Native American) descent aren't claiming superiority or supremacy. Just White folks do that. And I would have to say, that even if a Native American (for example) did claim superiority, at least over the "White" race, I would understand where they were coming from. Nobody has tried to do (and done) what Europeans and their descendents have done around the world in terms of pure unmitigated self-serving brutality under the guise of racial supremacy. The damage that has been done to the earth and all the life thereon, including human, by people that looked or look like me is such that we could, in fact, be seen as inferior to any group that has not so behaved.

Nevertheless, that is not what the other groups suggest. They are simply trying to regain the joy in being that has been so viciously robbed from them for so long in the name of White power. And they will not stop just because their oppressors feel put upon or misunderstood. It's time for White people to stop expecting people of color to make them feel better about themselves. It's time for White people to start looking inside and behaving in ways they can feel good about without pretense.

As Cooney finishes up, he calls Martin Luther King, Jr., a "person of the left" which is arguable. He sought inclusion was all, not a highly radical concept actually. He spoke out against war and against White supremacy, but he didn't seek to change the system of capitalist exploitation per se. Still, I think it's much more telling that Cooney makes it a point that he considers himself a leftist in the King tradition, and one who opposes multicultural separatism. Why this really concerns him so might make a interesting night's conversation one on one. Because nobody thinks we can actually live separately in this world any more. Hell, I can be read in Africa as soon as I push "enter." But as long as White people make everyone else's life a hell on earth, why would they want to live with us? That's the question. And Cooney knows it.

"The discrimination against blacks reinforced by stereotypes and prejudice," he writes in one of his last paragraphs, "actually creates a reality for blacks so ugly the whites are scared of their own creation. This then reinforces stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. But that is the way racist whites designed and want the system to work. (Except that it is working too damn well and creating too much crime even for them.)"

And with that, he closes, referring finally to Andrew Hacker's "elevator test" for racism. Hacker asks his audiences sometimes which elevator they would get in if they were presented with two cars arriving at the same time, one filled with young White males and the other with young Black males. Apparently, Hacker suggests that, if you choose the one with the White males, you are racist. Cooney claims, instead, that "we" would choose the car with the White males "every time not because we are racists, but because we, unlike Hacker, understand fully the cruel and devastating nature of America's racist system."

But Cooney is not right about all of us. I, for example, would get on the elevator with the young African-American males because, despite all the craziness of our shared history, I know they're still Africans in their hearts. And Africans have a deep sense of community.

When I was doing my research for my Master's thesis on social distance between Africans and African-Americans and the attitudes of White Americans toward both groups, I asked individuals from each of the three groups to choose adjectives to describe their own and the other groups. The Africans most commonly chose adjectives to describe themselves as community-oriented or good members of a community (such as "family-oriented," "tribal," "very religious," "friendly," "industrious," etc.). The European-Americans chose adjectives that marked them as "rugged individualists" ("career-oriented," "materialistic," "goal-oriented," "self-centered," "power-hungry" and so forth). But though the African-Americans chose some of the same adjectives as their fellow country men with lighter skin, they also chose adjectives such as "hard working," "family-oriented," and "very religious." So its still in there. Which is probably why they haven't burned this country down long ago.

So, precisely because I know "White" boys aren't always "nice" either, and because I know that African-American youth frequently are made to feel the burden of White racist fear--most of the time unfairly, I would march onto the elevator with the young Black men, looking them in the eye, speaking my greeting as I entered, and they would make space and speak to me back. The problem, Dr. Cooney, is a social constuction and will be resolved when White people change.

5th Erase Racism Blog Carnival Now Up

The 5th Erase Racism Blog Carnival is up over at Black Looks. This is the first time the carnival has been hosted outside of the United States. Huzzah! And a nod to those who were in a position to make this choice. Greetings to our African sisters and all the new voices who are heard at this excellent presentation. Long live the international blogosphere!!

A European-American Sets Me Straight (2)

"I find it very sad," Ms White went on in an email to which I began responding in an earlier post, "that you, as a white person, have chosen the path of self-loathing and self-hatred in order to sacrifice yourself at the altar of an ill-fated agenda."

Now, as those of you who read this blog regularly know, I choose to avoid referring to myself as a "White" person. I find the construct of "Whiteness" to be misleading. It implies that "Whiteness" is natural and acceptable, rather than socially-constructed and ignominious. So as soon as she addresses me as a "White" person, we're already talking two completely different languages.

Then, of course, she asserts that I am suffering from "self-loathing" and "self-hatred." This is rather like a German Nazi in 1941 castigating a German who doesn't believe in using death camps for not loving their "race." Excuse me? It would appear that Ms White is saying that I need to hate and persecute others in order to love myself. Which sounds really, really sick. In fact, it seems to me that if I can't love myself fully, embracing all that is me, while celebrating all that is represented by all other life on earth (including other humans), then perhaps I've missed the point about being alive period. Those who must destroy and degenerate others to feel acceptable manifest in a most obvious way their own sense of inadequacy. This is why they really must attack. They know no other way to feel beautiful. Even though they are. Which is a shame, particularly considering what has had to happen to them to bring them to that conclusion and especially since no one but they themselves can break the chains of their mental slavery.

One can only imagine what she means by "an ill-fated agenda." What might she possibly think my "agenda" could be? To place people of color in domination over European-Americans (as if I wanted to go from one system of oppression to another)? To take away all her goodies and give them to people living in storm drains in Haiti (not a bad idea, really, but hardly my "agenda")? Why do I have to have an "agenda" at all? What if I just hold these truths to be self-evident: that all humans have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? What if I just value truth, peace, and freedom for all peoples? What if I just espouse principles such as "honesty," "openmindedness" to reality (as opposed to mindlessly following the party line), and "willingness" to grow spiritually and be useful? What if I really believe that what goes around, comes around? Lots of people say they believe that, but you can tell by examining their lives, attitudes, and behaviors that they do not. Ms White, for example, who continues:

"To offer one self (sic) up in this manner is not only tragic but humiliating. Those who advocate this line of thinking for white people are not only self-serving but truly racist."

Here I become befuddled. "To offer oneself up" would seem to me to be the antithesis of anything "self-serving." Admittedly, a bank robber seeking 15 minutes of fame by engaging in a police shoot-out might be said to be simultaneously "offering herself up" and "self-serving." But how would I be typifying that kind of go-for-broke insanity? I am writing about what's in the best interests of the human race rather than what appears superficially to be in the best interests of one minority group (European-Americans and "White" people in general being a distinct minority in the overall world population). And, certainly, the human race does, in fact, include me, yes. But Ms White calls what I'm doing "tragic" and "humiliating." She appears to see my assumption that all humans are ipso facto deserving of basic human rights and considerations somehow degrading to herself as a "White" person. If I follow her thinking, she would seem to suggest that seeing "White" as superior and more deserving of privilege is not only appropriate, but altruistic (the opposite of "self-serving"). "Huh...?" you might grunt. That's right. According to Ms White, "White" people who see and treat people of color as inferior must be actually just accepting them as they are and looking out for them.

This is not a new idea. Europeans who first constructed the concept of "race" did so for capitalistic reasons--they smelled money and they wanted it. But they understood that in order to stand the test of time, the concept would have to be couched in protective coloration, if you will. Such as religious acceptability (people of color would be better off as "Christians" than as anything else). Or "scientific" "research" (in publications supported by and provided to those with the power to define, "finding" people of color to have smaller brains or a "culture of poverty"). Or morality (people of color need "White" people to "take care of" them, just as women need men to "take care of" them--skip that people of color have been taking care of "White" folks for centuries and women have been taking care of men for milennia).

Since I fly in the face of this type of reasoning, Ms White sees me as a threat to the paradigm into which we've all been born, a world view that people who look like me are superior and therefore should rightly dominate everyone else. If this is a tragic and humiliating stance for me to take, in her opinion, then I stand tragically and humiliated with all those others she would reduce summarily as being less deserving of life's joys than she is herself. The unfortunate reality, of course, is that people who think like Ms White are typically joyless, rather than happy, and in view of the fact that their money-driven, self-aggrandizing, and bitterly myopic perspectives would drive the human race into mass collective suicide, I can only say that I'll dance on her grave in a red dress before I'll sit idly by and let her and her ilk lead us all into ultimate extinction.

Thank You, Mr. Bush

Duck on over to Poetic Justice and listen to the National Slam Bush Champion, Vanessa German, a bee-yoo-tiful African-American lesbian who says it for all of us. That's the way--uh-huh, uh-huh--I like it (uh-huh, uh-huh)...

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, As It Were?

Last night, I got an email informing me that "Black.White." came out on DVD yesterday. Apparently, they decided to email every blogger who mentioned the show back when it was on to say that they could get a copy of the DVD set for mentioning it again. Well, hell, yes!

Now, some of you already read what I wrote about this show. I haven't changed my mind and if you didn't catch it the first time around, you can read about it here or here or even here. A whole bunch of you probably saw the show anyway, developing your own opinions about it. And some of you would probably like to know it's now available (see this).

So...it's available. I intend to add it to my collection and show clips in classes to illustrate various points I make in the blog posts. Thanks for reading this so I can get a freebie. Oh, yeah, and you can tell 'em Changeseeker sent you. Won't get you a discount. And they couldn't care less. But I just couldn't resist saying that.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

A European-American Sets Me Straight (1)

In the middle of all my recent fun, I received an email to which I simply didn't have time to respond instantly. I did answer the writer briefly, noting that she, like many others who cannot receive what I write, didn't sound interested in any response anyway, but rather just wanted to set me straight. I assured her that I would respond eventually on my blog, however. And now that the fog is lifting, that's what I'm going to do. But keep in mind that I'm neither captured by her rhetoric nor trying to convince her of anything. I don't argue with people who don't "get it" because it's a waste of everyone's time--mine and theirs. And it's perfectly okay for her to have any opinion she wants. How could I argue with that?

The point is that what she puts forward, as is so often the case, is based on (in Harlan Ellison's words) "bleached-out baby shit." That is to say, what makes her as a White person, and she is White, whether she means to be or not, so White is that she doesn't have the knowledge, the understanding, the empathy, the sense of perspective, or (apparently) the willingness to acquire any of these things that would make it possible for her to "get it." And again, that is, in fact, her right. Just as it would be her right to refuse medical attention even in the face of a dire illness. Just as it would be her right to turn down lottery winnings. Just as it would be her right to walk out onto a freeway in the middle of the night wearing dark colored clothes. Stupid, maybe. Hard to comprehend, certainly. But her right? Absolutely.

So then, why answer her at all? Well, first of all, because I want to. I mean, I can, right? Her email was a direct response to one or more things I have written on this blog. She sent it to me (signed, actually) and I can, then, of course, use the email however I see fit. How I see fit to use it is to give those who want to be allies some ideas to consider for when they might find themselves being "straightened." Out of concern that this post might run to book length all by itself, however, I'll respond to the email in question in pieces. And, since they'll all be written to would-be allies rather than racists, these "responses" will be installments in the series on how European-Americans can ally themselves with people of color in their own best interests.

And heeeere we go!

"Hello,
While I agree that in utopia there would be no racism..."

(an interesting way to begin a long treatise on why racism is reasonable)

"...in all fairness it is the non-whites themselves who are now the worst perpetrators of this social malignancy. Case in point, the special interest groups who cater to specific minorities and work exclusively on their behalf rather than the behalf of all human beings. We are all supposed to be equal yet certain minorities segregate themselves out by clinging onto their separate cultures, languages, traditions, frequenting their own institutions and media and supporting only their own kind. I guess that doesn't qualify as racism in your mind. White people don't have large national organizations dedicated to their needs, non-whites do..."

This reference to "self-segregation" is one of the prime indicators of cluelessness. Europeans created the socially-constructed, political notion of "race," in the first place, just before the Industrial Revolution for the express purpose of exploiting people of color and their resources. If one's purpose is to exploit--boldly, brutally, continuously, and without apology--and one manages to set up a system within which this exploitation is acceptable and even supported by the ritualized norms of the societies using it, at what point would those benefitting from the exploitation decide voluntarily that they had benefitted enough? A hundred years? Two hundred? Four hundred years? So far in history, to the best of our knowledge, those who use power (and especially those who use force) to dominate others typically sit on that power until they become convinced that those they dominate are about to successfully unseat them OR until they become so dysfunctional with weakness, they simply collapse under the weight of their own poor choices.

But the writer of this email--let's call her "Ms White" (not to be confused with the character in the parlor game, Clue, which was one of my favorite games as a youth)--would have us believe that White folks set up this fabulous system, sucking the very life out of millions of people for hundreds of years, but giving up all the benefits of that system...uh...at what point exactly? That is to say, all the social institutions in the United States were set up by property-holding White men for the benefit of property-holding White men and these same social institutions have continued to be maintained and controlled by property-holding White men throughout the duration to the present moment.

So at what point exactly could Ms White possibly believe that people of color, and African-Americans in particular, suddenly became the recipients of equal access to all that power? And if they did have equal access to all that power (and all the goodies that accompany it), wouldn't they, of all people, know it? And if they had equal access to all the power and all the goodies, why would they need to or want to "self-segregate"? Why in the world would they form "national organizations" outside the mainstream if they had equal access to everything in the society?

As for the assertion that "White people don't have large national organizations dedicated to their needs," the fact is that White people have almost all large national organizations dedicated to their needs. Virtually everything in the society is calculated to meet the needs of White people, even poor White people, either overtly or covertly, while people of color are forced to organize to keep from drowning or watching others drown in the backwater. White folks have the most of the best and the least of the worst throughout the society. African-American men are four times more likely than European-American men to be unemployed at every educational level and only receive 68-76% of the wages of a White man when they do pull off getting hired. For example. What would Ms White have people of color do? Sit quietly? I'll bet.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard an African-American say in an overly polite voice, "No, that's all right, go ahead..." when acquiescing to a bullish White person who has taken over a situation in one way or another, whether it's to get waited on first or listened to first or even through the door first. White folks are so used to being...well..."White" and, God knows, treated as "White," (with all the attendant accompaniments), they don't even realize (or admit) it's going on. Consequently, I will do everything but lay my coat over a mud puddle to show respect for African-Americans, even strangers (and maybe especially strangers). Do I catch myself "acting White" sometimes anyway, or worse yet, get caught occasionally by a person of color doing so? Of course. I look "White." I was socialized as "White." I am approached in hundreds of ways daily as "White." And I have to be stringently vigilent to avoid the default positions.

There are organizations where European-Americans and people of color are fully represented and equal, but they are notable for their infrequency. When I enter a conference or a meeting where there are few, if any, African-Americans, I know I'm coming into a space that is not safe or welcoming to people of color. People of color have to enter such spaces on a regular basis in the United States--out of necessity. If they want a job. If they want to know what's going on in their field. If they live in the suburbs. If they attend (or send their kids to) a public university. They can't take their clothes to the cleaners, go to the grocery, walk into a major department store, visit a mainstream museum, or even walk down the street without having to steel themselves against possible rejection, insult, or ignorance. The most rudimentary activities of daily life hold multiple opportunities for European-Americans to be validated and people of color to be made to feel reduced. Organizations--national or otherwise--are just one arena in which these validations and reductions are carried out. To cast aspersions on African-Americans and other people of color for bonding together in the interest of making a safe space for themselves is to be so mean-spirited that one wants them not only to suffer, but to be unable to exhale for even a minute. Tsk, tsk, Ms White. Tsk, tsk.