(no subject)

[rivka]

I've been following the Great Post-Wiscon Cultural Appropriation Debate with considerable interest. (If you haven't, rilina has a comprehensive link roundup here.)

My thoughts are a little bit scattered, and mostly focus on this observation by yhlee:

In four journals--mine, rilina's, oyceter's, and cofax7's (I believe that was the fourth; oyceter, correct me if I'm wrong)--discussion of cultural appropriation and authenticity kept turning to discussions of white cultures and distinctions, deflecting attention away from cultures that do not have white privilege.

My father has told me stories about ways in which, as a person of Jewish descent in Boston in the 1940s and 1950s, some people perceived him as Not White (and Not Acceptable). Those are interesting stories about my father, and interesting stories about the history of anti-Semitism in the United States. But if they're what immediately comes to mind for me to talk about when a person of color talks about racism he or she experiences today, I need to stop and ask myself why.

I was talking about this with Michael yesterday, and he pointed out that people are likely to perceive two potential characters to identify with in a story about racism: the victim and the evil oppressor. Well-meaning liberal whites genuinely don't see themselves as the oppressor, so the only way for them to slot themselves into the story is to find a way to analogize themselves with the victim. So the prejudice their Irish ancestors experienced a hundred and fifty years ago, or the suppression of a minority white ethnic group back in the Old Country from which their ancestors emigrated, is placed on the table as a token of which side they belong to.

I don't think that's necessarily a conscious process, by the way. I think that one of the ways that white privilege affects its recipients is that it makes distinctions among white cultures and white ethnic experiences genuinely seem like the really interesting questions about race. I think the people yhlee complained about had no perception of themselves as ignoring or minimizing the perceptions of people of color - I expect that they saw themselves as moving beyond racial dualities in a sophisticated way that looked at subtle distinctions among races generally perceived as monolithic. In one sense, they weren't wrong. Those are interesting questions. They just happen to be interesting questions that put the spotlight on white people and their feelings and experiences, at the expense of people of color who are pushed into the background.

I want to suggest that white people don't have to choose between slotting ourselves into a story about racial prejudice as the Victim or being forced into the role of the Evil Oppressor. There's a third option, a third role that one can identify with: The Person The Story Is Not About. It's possible to listen to people of color talk about race without either trying to ally your experiences with theirs, or explaining why you aren't the bad guy. It's possible, in other words, to just listen, and try to hear the story from the other person's perspective without immediately leaping to put yourself at its center.

That's not an easy thing for a member of a dominant culture. We're used to most stories being about us, in one way or another. (Okay, it's also hard for humans in general, because egocentrism is pretty much an organizing feature of the human brain, but members of minority cultures get a lot more experience with stories that are not about them and that don't even allude to them.) I recognize that it's not easy, and I don't claim to be especially or particularly good at it myself. But given the number of other things that are easier when you're white, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect us to spare the effort.

A final comment about egocentrism. In white folks' comments to the cultural appropriation debate, I'm seeing a lot of frustration that "there's no way we can win." If a white author depicts an all-white world in her books, that's racist; if she doesn't, that's cultural appropriation. Double-bind! It's a common theme in white folks' responses to discussions of white privilege in general.

Here's what I want to say about that: "how can I win?" is not the right question to be asking in this discussion, especially if "winning" means something like "not having to worry any more about being criticized on racial issues." "There's no way we can win," again, takes the focus off the problems of people of color and puts it onto white people. I'm sympathetic to the feelings it reflects, because I too am a person who wants to Do The Right Thing with respect to race. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting that. What's wrong, I think, is expecting that I should be able to put myself into a position where my race doesn't ever matter because I am behaving correctly on racial issues. People of color don't ever get to be in the position where their race doesn't matter, and it's a reflection of white privilege to believe that if I "follow the rules," I should be able to be there myself. Race matters, and requires careful consideration and reflection and acknowledgement of double-binds and paradoxes and above all listening.

One doesn't get to demand rules that let one opt out of doing that work.

Comments

[oyceter]

*hugs you hard*

Thank you!

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Yes! I remember telling a friend that grocery stores are really difficult for me (I buy most other things online), and they are -- I have to lean on the cart and sit on all the benches the Giant has around and then give the cashier money and go sit on another bench until she finishes checking me out. My friend said "Oh, everybody gets tired at the grocery store," which made me feel like she didn't believe I was disabled.

[aloha-moira.livejournal.com]

What a thoughtful post/series of comments.

I'm not sure I have much to offer, but the concept of "chiming in" as a technique for attempting to empathize really rings true to me. I feel like I'm often guilty of trying to draw analogies between other people's experiences and my own. I don't necessarily do this because I believe the experiences are equivalent, but because it's a way for me to get a better handle on the situation. I usually want to be helpful and offer advice, limited as it might be, and the only way I feel like I can do that is to speak from my own experiences. I can definitely see how it might make the other person feel that I'm trivializing their situation, regardless of my intent, but it's hard not to do it when it's the only way I know how to empathize.

I think a big problem is that most people *don't* know normal conversational non-therapeutic ways of empathizing or communicating in this sort of situation, so comparing to their own experience is the default. I think that most people grow up in a fairly homogenous environment, where it's usually perfectly appropriate to compare experiences. Then, when we eventually want to communicate with people who are very different (or who have had very different experiences), we aren't equipped with the proper tools - because we haven't had many opportunities to learn how.

I suppose part of the problem is the assumption that when someone discusses their problems, they must be looking for advice or empathy when really they may just want a sympathetic ear. So the first step would be to acknowledge that we may be doing more harm than good by trying to give advice or empathize. But the second step - actually knowing *how* to listen sympathetically despite not personally identifying with the situation - is still problematic for many people.

Way, way off topic apart from the last sentence, but probably necessary

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

It does sound like Rivka's example. That's also not a typical example of the sort of empathetic analogy I'm talking about being typical in conversations. I'd give you a real example of what I do mean, but all the conversations I've analyzed professionally are in German. :-) So here's a fake one:

Young woman #1: Oh, my god, my real estate agent is driving me crazy. He keeps showing us houses that are too far away from the centre of town! I keep trying to guide him in the right direction, but he's just not getting it.

Young woman #2: Oh, jeez. We had to deal with that with our builder, too. They wanted us to build in one of those icky suburbs, and we couldn't convince them that we really wanted a downtown neighbourhood.

Young woman #1: I just don't know what to do. I mean, should I fire him or what? Surely there are plenty of other real estate agents out there.

#1 is complaining in her first "turn," and #2 makes a comment on that complaint in her first turn, by means of an analogy. The analogy conveys an experience that has some superficial similarities with the one #1 is complaining about, but isn't identical. #1 doesn't comment on the analogy, but takes it as the "ping, I understand" that it was meant to be, and goes on saying what she'd been intending to say. Also important: the conversation continues with #1's narrative, and doesn't get derailed by #2's side comment.

If #1 didn't accept #2's analogy, an ordinary conversation along the same lines might go like this:

Young woman #1: Oh, my god, my real estate agent is driving me crazy. He keeps showing us houses that are too far away from the centre of town! I keep trying to guide him in the right direction, but he's just not getting it.

Young woman #2: Oh, jeez. We had to deal with that with our builder, too. They wanted us to build in one of those icky suburbs, and we couldn't convince them that we really wanted a downtown neighbourhood.

Young woman #1: Yeah, but at least you could fire your builder if you wanted to! My real estate agent is Jane's cousin. I just don't know what I should do. Should I fire him or what? Maybe it would be worth the hassle.

Young woman #2: Maybe you should ask Jane what she thinks you should do.

Here, #1 interjects the objection to the analogy into the conversation, and then continues with what she really wanted to ask her friend. Her friend responds by addressing neither her analogy nor the objection, but the original conversation topic. Nothing gets derailed.

This happens all the time in casual conversation. It sounded to me like Rivka was saying in this post something like "when it's a cultural minority talking about her cultural experience, the conversational rules are different." Which may be true, but if it is, that's not without its own problems.

-J

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Very true.

-J

[redbird]

Yes. The sort of things that might be well-intentioned but practically shout that the person either isn't really listening or doesn't understand what you're saying.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Now, whatever their motives - expressing empathy, making me feel that I wasn't alone, suddenly struck by the fact that all bodies are imperfect and wanting to share their insight - the effect on me was always to make me feel completely alienated, msunderstood, and trivialized. It felt like the difficulties of my situation made them so uncomfortable that they had to gloss over them by comparing them to something minor and making it seem like they'd "been there." It definitely felt like they were making the comparison to make themselves feel better, not to make me feel better.

I had the same reaction to people who responded to my depression by pointing out all the things I had to be happy about. In an effor to "cheer me up".

Talking to other people who were suffering from depression, OTOH, made me feel understood and commiserated with.

(Just noodling here.)

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Beautifully put. Do you read debunkingwhite? I do, and it's been very eye-opening.

It reminds me of a bit from one of Steven Brust's post-500 Years Later series; I can't remember which book, and I'm not sure what that series is called, but anyway. One character is talking about another character, and describes him as self-centered. She elaborates that he isn't selfish, but that he looks at any situation from the perspective of "What can I do?", rather than "What needs to be done?" Wheras the answer to the second question can sometimes be "Nothing," or as in your post "Shut up and listen," the answer to the first question moves attention away from the situation and towards the person asking the question.

So, yes. I've been doing a lot of listening and thinking lately. Sometimes, it's incredibly hard to just shut up and listen, and not immediately try to jump in with "Well, this one time, me me me..." It's hard to accept that some discussions aren't about me. And yes, I think that's a human thing; but it's also very much a white dominant-culture thing.

I've also found it extremely helpful to juxtapose discussions of race with discussions of gender. I'm wondering if it might be helpful to compare white folks talking about being oppressed in racial discussions with men talking about being oppressed in gender discussions. There's a valid point to such comments, but when the problem is so overwhelmingly one-sided, drawing attention to the priveledged group and away from the group that is having genuine problems is... at best, disingenious; at worst, a deliberate attempt to deny the weaker group of a genuine voice and perspective.

[/end flailing]

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I know from my work in conversation analysis that telling a little anecdote from your own life is a normal, useful way for a co-conversationalist to convey empathy with the person who's narrating some aspect of *their* life.

Do you understand that your experience of this as a normal, baseline mode of interaction may be located within a specific cultural context?

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

Actually, in both my personal and professional experience it's located within several different cultural contexts--and even one intercultural context. You're right, though, that there may well be cultural contexts in which people do not do this. I'm not aware of any, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.

-J

[iamjw.livejournal.com]

One concept I don't see covered here is that of active listening. Of asking questions about what people are saying when they are sharing, rather than jumping in with anecdotes of your own. Questions that show that you're listening and attempting to understand something that you've not experienced yourself can help to validate the speaker, in that they may feel that they've managed to really explain themselves and enlighten someone. It's an awful lot more than nodding and saying yes, dear.

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I actually have difficulty believing that those kinds of comments are actually well-intentioned. They're quite different both in form and in content than the sort of thing I was talking about.

-J

[elusis.livejournal.com]

The context issue isn't just about what occurs within one culture or another. It's about cross-cultural experiences - one culture experiencing another as dominant, pervasive, more powerful, and self-centered. In that cross-cultural context, what might be an appropriate communication mode within either or even both cultures no longer has the same meaning.

Rivka and others' comments elsewhere in this thread explicate this quite well, I think, especially in terms of people of color's perception of white people preferring to talk about race in terms of distinctions of whiteness rather than facing information which may make them confront racism toward POCs.

But this takes us far afield

[redbird]

There seems to be a range from well-intentioned but clueless attempts to reassure the person being addressed, like assuring someone who has a disability that affects how they think that "oh, everyone forgets things," to a weird sort of denial that the speaker's friend can be disabled or that their problems are significant. I think the latter is a particularly dubious sort of banishing/magical thinking, a refusal to admit that a friend or relative can be disabled because the speaker is, on some level, afraid that if their friend can be disabled (mentally or physically) the speaker might not be immune.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

Excellent point, and very relevant. Learning how to facilitate someone else coming to voice and feeling heard, without interjecting yourself as a character in the story, is an exceptionally useful talent in cross-cultural studies.

[elusis.livejournal.com]

I have a problem with the idea that one is always entitled to talk about one's personal experience with issues of (gender, culture, race, etc.) just because the subject has been brought up by others. That's precisely the kind of re-centering the narrative on oneself that is so offensive to those who are members of historically oppressed or disadvantaged groups.

Re: Way, way off topic apart from the last sentence, but probably necessary

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Ok, I do understand what you mean by this sort of analogy.

I think the problem rivka is talking about is more than just this gone wrong, though. It's a hijacking of the discussion. I suppose that might be more of an effect than an intent, though.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I could *so* kiss you right now.

(checks Amtrak schedule)

Re: Way, way off topic apart from the last sentence, but probably necessary

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I definitely think it's more than just that gone wrong. I mean, I'd have to look at a bunch of examples in context to really analyze what's going on, but I have a hard time attributing empathy to something like that. And it's more than just a hijacking of the discussion, it's also a...belittling. Trivalizing. Again, I'd have to look at the function of a whole bunch of examples to be sure, but I have a hard time imagining that that's not intentional.

But--as the person who brought up this issue to begin with--I assure you that I never meant anything along Rivka's example's lines in the first place. (And having discussed these issues with Rivka in the past, I knew she would realize that.)

-J

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I'm unsure that "always" (or "never") is a useful way of describing any interaction between people. And I can't completely describe what is offensive to members of historically oppressed or disadvantaged groups. But I will say that describing one's own experience in response to someone describing theirs is so universal that I begin to believe that it is the main conversational expectation and skill people of my culture bring to the table. I regularly finding myself wishing to stifle this impulse in commenters to my journal posts, because there are times when I don't want to compare mine with someone else's experience, I just want to be heard when talking about mine. Thus sharing experiences and using that as an attempt to relate to others isn't, in my experience, necessarily a cross-cultural problem. And obviously it is not always a tool that works well.

If this is the main tool for expressing empathy and understanding available to people of my culture, it seems other cultures are pretty likely to have different tools, but I don't know what those are. I would like to, not (I like to believe) to appropriate them, but to better be able to understand what their expectations are, and to use that understanding to step outside my own (admittedly shallow) skills.

I am in a multi-cultural multi-lingual environment a few days a week as a school volunteer, but I haven't picked up very many hints on this from the children I work with. I am generally complimented when the black kids tell me things about white people, or the hispanic kids tell me things about English people, but the subtleties of their cultural expectations are not clear to me, especially since these are young children. I do notice that, as the kids get older (I have worked with the same children for three years now), they are less interested in my advice, straight on. They ask for and seem to like to hear stories about when I was their age, or about my children, so I slip in advice that way. (It's usually "how to get your homework done" or "how to take care of yourself when things are really bad at home.") The current topic has been about politics among the girls, and I have helped a few of them understand how friendships flow between girls, and what's going wrong when there are problems. These are girls from at least 6 different ethnic backgrounds.

So, even here, I am using my own experience to understand and interpret how these minority kids are experiencing the world, though I do a lot of listening, and my volunteer schedule is purposely set up so that I have them in small groups so that listening (me to them, and them to each other) is easier to do. As the kids get older, I can see that my default conversational tool will be less useful, but I honestly don't have any great ideas about how to better understand what their cultural conversational assumptions and skills are.

K.

[firecat]

simply a part of everyday conversation

Is "everyday conversation" really as monolithic as that?

[therealjae.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what you mean by "as that," so the best answer to your question is that I don't know. There are in fact plenty of ways in which "everyday conversation" behaves in exactly the same way around the world--there are always strikingly similar mechanisms for turn-taking, for example. Whether this is like that, well--I think we probably don't have enough information about cross-cultural differences in showing empathy to make a claim one way or the other.

In general, though, the extent to which different cultures can be said to have entirely different conversational mechanisms that can then account for the various misunderstandings that arise has tended to be overstated, not understated. Intercultural communication scholars have tended to concentrate on misunderstandings because they're easy to spot and academically "sexy," but there are in fact far more ways that people from different cultures adapt to each other's slightly different conversational mechanisms and communicate successfully than there are ways that they misunderstand each other.

-J

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Well, half of this is in how you define "historically oppressed or disadvantaged". I know I don't count to an American because of skin colour -- actually I didn't know that before this debate. "Historical oppression and disadvantage" in Britain would count my grandmother being beaten in school in Wales for speaking Welsh when she couldn't speak any other language, and certainly all Jewish people who left Europe in the thirties would be assumed to have been historically oppressed and disadvantaged. Not that this is the point.

If the issue is "how it sucks to have a different colour skin in the US" then obviously my personal experience is irrelevant. If it's "cultural appropriation in SF and fantasy" then I don't see that issue as limited in that way.

Of course, part of the problem in the wider meta-conversation may be that some people think the conversation is about racism in the US and others think it's about cultural appropriation in SF and fantasy. This is clearly a problem especially for those of us outside the US.

I was thinking how different this was from when roadnotes said that someone spat on her in the bank because she was black. Then the reaction was essentially "OMG! The bastard! You poor thing!" with a side of "I didn't realise things were still so bad!" -- "Oh yes they are!". Because there the conversation was one person reporting a personal experience, and I don't think anyone had the slightest urge to say "That's just like the time my bank clerk didn't give me the right change" or whatever, because it obviously wasn't.

But this conversation started in a different place. That's certainly why I felt I had something to contribute.

Well, it has certainly enhanced my understanding of US culture.

(Samuel Delany said in an interview on Slate that he expected in the future people would think the problem of gender and race were as silly as we think the problem of demonic possession.)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

To me, it reads really differently coming from you than it does coming from a fourth-generation American who is casting back to ancestral cultures that generally have no connection to their lived experience.

It's not, from my perspective, that your views and experiences don't count because you're white. The phenomenon I was trying to address is that yhlee, rilina, and oyceter had specifically stated in their posts that they wanted to host a discussion about how cultural appropriation applied to people of color, and people still responded to those posts by ignoring their racial points and attempting to re-focus the discussion on white people.

I would personally be very interested to hear what you have to say about the appropriation of your culture by fantasy writers, but not in the context of a discussion in which the hosts have requested a different focus to the conversation.

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

What's wrong, I think, is expecting that I should be able to put myself into a position where my race doesn't ever matter because I am behaving correctly on racial issues. People of color don't ever get to be in the position where their race doesn't matter, and it's a reflection of white privilege to believe that if I "follow the rules," I should be able to be there myself.

It is, but I'm not sure the solution is to give up demanding it for myself, rather than to start demanding it for others as well, or at least to get out of their way as much as possible so that they can demand it for themselves.

I find it difficult to talk about these issues in the abstract, though; in real life, my reaction would be heavily dependent on why the other person in the conversation had chosen to raise this issue (rather than some other topic) with me (rather than someone else). Venting calls for a different response than a request for a specific action from me, which calls for a different response than a personal accusation, which calls for a different response than generalised aggression based on my perceived ethnicity.