Shut up and Listen
i met a friend of hers over the weekend and i guess i'm not the only brown girl who's having a tough racial summer.
it's ranty, powerful and impolite. read it.
[update: this is the original piece from kiwi grrl that pointed me to the above post. she rocks!]
18 comments:
interesting. she's clearly young and reminds me of you perhaps in your political hay day. that said, i'm weary of the bitching without the action plan.
and why do brown people have to come up with an action plan for white people and their racial blindness?
we are not responsible for that.
bitching does nothing. it is wrong to assume that all white people have racial blindness, but it is also wrong to assume that it is solely up to white people to change it. Action affects change. To complain and point out the effects of racism without demanding specific change--and by change, I mean SPECIFIC. Policy. Law. Accountability. We will get nowhere. White people are ignorant. Yes. But we are sheep. Products of our generations. Products of our environments. Expecting change without direction is futile.
"A tough racial summer" - ha!
Dang, I hate it when they're down on the brown. No good dang reason for it.
no one has said that all white people have racial blindness (or i wouldn't have the roommate that i have).
all white people benefit from white privilege, however.
i agree - action comes before change. but action by brown people to make someone else conscious of their own privilege? not my job, dude. that's like i'm supposed to expect a poor person to get me in touch with my class privilege. my privilege is not their burden; i'm supposed to be concious of it and then act accordingly.
it's not like white privilege is a mystery or something that's just been discovered; it's not like brown people have been hoarding news of this thing called privilege to spring it on you all just for a surprise. shit, we've been talking about it for years. we've been trying to get folks to pay attention to it since forever.
why hasn't anyone listened?
privilege exists and it's up to y'all to deal. don't feel guilty or feel bad; it is the way it is. accept it but understand how your privilege affects others; understand how it works and in whose interest. now, what you do with your privilege - well, that's the action that counts.
and i disagree - bitching does everything.
it names it. it exposes it.
to not bitch about it would be to hide it, to make it nice and pretty and acceptable for people to be ignorant.
bitching says it's not ok. bell hooks said anger is good and i agree. it gives voice to what others want hidden.
why should white people care about understanding their own privilege?
So they acknowledge that yes, being white affords us certain privileges. And then what?
In the end, it seems like what really keeps people down is Class.
Education. Dough.
in what i've been thinking about; that's how it's been a tough racial summer for me.
don't worry, it has nothing to do with you.
and to anon: ok, let's turn that question around a little bit. why shouldn't white people think about understanding their privilege?
if i can think about the ways that my class privilege differentiates the way i experience the world, don't you think that changes how i interact with Others in the world and what i think about the world?
if you don't want to think about whiteness and what it means then, fine. be ignorant. be that stumbling, fuddling person who just doesn't get that race matters quite alot in this country. your ability to ignore it and say it doesn't matter IS your privilege. you can allow yourself to be blind.
unfortunately, not so others.
(and, yes. often race is marked, really, by class. very astute of you.)
and i REALLY can't say enough about READING:
http://eratoscreed.blogspot.com/2005/07/its-summer-what-else-have-you-got-to.html
jeezus, people. we all have to work for our knowledge. open a book!
in fact, ruth frankenberg's 'white women, race matters' is an excellent book for y'all to get off my back about this. shit, this is pissing me off, to explain something so fucking basic.
READ something and THEN come back.
Race does matter in this country and yessss, White people have privilages that other ethnic groups do not. However, on that note, I would like to recommend
Shelby Steele's book for everybody who needs to really educate themselves on race talk. " The Content of Our Character"
Dang! I'm so glad I'm not a liberal
Anon's argument:
1) White people but are clueless sheep, but it's not their responsibility to change.
2) bitching makes him weary.
What are you thinking, son, that we're going to check out your book suggestion and then feel better about the world?
Here's what I think, anon. I think I don't give a FUCK that you're weary. Nope. Not slightly.
We don't answer to you. Go be weary. Tell us about it even. But understand that we are not required to give a fuck for one second.
You: I'm weary!
Me: I don't give a fuck.
Now what, I'm supposed to read your book? Probably not going to happen.
By the way, your action plan should be to learn to spell 'heyday.'
nice, jp.
you know, i don't blame anyone for saying the steele book is a model for brown people to be thinking of race relations. he trots out the 'personal responsibility' thing for black folk and cautiously leaves it unproblematized.
fine. it's a comfort zone thing.
here's another author for you, then:
michael eric dyson, 'Is Bill Cosby Right?'
there. we've shared books.
The book was recommended as a start. Not for you’ all to get so hot about it. Just like a liberal always taking offense for wrong reason. Sydney had a right to Bitch. Hell, I do all the time. What bothers me about most of your post was, poor brown people talk, really? You can't undo what was done to some people centuries ago. It will take people like Sydney to keep on bitching to evoke change; not only in white people,(good luck)but brown people too! It may not happen in this life time; at least she'll know what she stood for. Every conservative thinker is not a racial idiot, at least not the smart ones, heh!
Michael Eric Dyson? Ding, PLEEEAASSSE, I'll pass. He is one of the reason why brown people keep thinking they're victims. Hmmm... let me think, how about Star Parker? Yeah, there you go. A black ex-welfare recipient. Now we're talking.
1. you're patronizing.
2. you're not listening.
3. star parker is not the same as a professor of africana studies at UPenn (nice for conflating that, though)
4. to call someone out on their shit is not to bleat 'victim' (which i'm sure i haven't nor anyone else)
5. race is a construct that demands that we (all of us) examine the ways that we participate, proliferate and create what we ideologically recognize as 'race' - thus the importance of recognizing privilege.
6. yes, it will take people like sydney to evoke change, but let's not forget it'll also take the girl in the problematic facebook to change, regardless of what sydney does.
nuff said.
who's star parker?
For you Ding.
"Uncle Sam's Plantation"
How Big Government Enslaves America's poor and What we can do about it".
I have others, but since you brought up Dyson, I feel she's brown, knows what its like to be poor and she is from the hood. Excellent appeal to authority; unlike Dyson.
you know Anon, after posting this comment, i'm going to close comments on this topic because, well, you're about to give me a stroke. it's clear you have NO friends of color who are honest with you. that's all brown people really ask - let's be honest. fine, you have no problem with your privilege, this is the problem *we* have with it. you don't wanna do anything with it? dude, that's your thing. whatever.
we won't be hanging out.
but now my white friends think i think they're racist because i happen to be talking about race in a critical way this summer - a process that really had nothing to do with them in the first place.
two, because it's clear you don't get it. and that's fine. i don't know who you are and, frankly, who gives a shit what you think?
what matters to me is the world i live in. the world where i have a generous, loving, and righteous white roommate. a white woman, despite all my issues, who stood next to me when my mother died; a woman who, despite her own background, has tried to look at race in a meaningful way this summer, which is more than what i can say for you.
she has tried to occupy the other side; she has tried to understand, and she has never resorted to being patronizing or full of such problematic bullshit like yours.
take your poster girl for personal responsibility, star fucking parker (whoever the fuck she is, self-hating bitch she appears to be), and stuff it up your ass.
race is a construct and a problem and a worry for me right now. but, sometimes, that's over-powered by the fact that some of my best friends are white. wonderful, great, fabulous white women who speak the same language of justice, empowerment and love.
go fuck yourself. you made my chest clench today and i'm through with you.
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