(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

[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.