(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

[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.

[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

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.

Re: But this takes us far afield

[firecat]

When I was a child I used to respond to my grandmother's complaints about not being able to remember a word by saying that I sometimes couldn't remember a word either. I was uncomfortable with the complaints. I don't think it was so much that I was reminded of my own mortality as that I tended to think that complaints meant I was supposed to fix it, and well, I couldn't.

Now that I'm in my 40s and starting to notice the not remembering a word thing happening more often, I am NOT saying that in response to my parents' complaining about not being able to remember a word.