A Daily Dose of Racism
A list of the little daily indignities that come from presenting the “right” race in the “right” place at the “right” time
1. A conversation with white, liberal, educated acquaintances took a turn into Conservative Talk Radio Land once the subject of Affirmative Action was breached. All these acquaintances have, in the past, even in the same conversation, complained about the total incompetence of many of their fellow white students, but those complaints never took the extra step of assuming these incompetent students attend school due to unfair advantages conferred upon them by their race.
As soon as race became a factor, all the liberal racism came pouring out, from the disclaimers about how certainly “they” and “those” and “inner city” people have had unfair advantages from the start, how some of them don’t even know how to raise their children, and racism is bad, y’all. I’ve come to consider this the white liberal way of saying “I’m not racist, but,” now that “I’m not racist, but” has become a more identifiably racist phrase. Now it’s “I have a tertiary, surface understanding of and sympathy for the buzzword social issues I generally hypothetically know racism is a part of, but black people sure are stupid.”
I acted out a little. When talking with liberal white racists, the kind who stumble like frightened rabbits over “AfricanAmerican black colored uh personofcolor I mean colorblindcolorblindcolorblind,” but can say quite clearly and without a fear-ridden speech impediment, “Some of these people don’t even know you’re not supposed to hit children,” I like to rephrase things more bluntly. Nine times out of ten, it just makes everybody too uncomfortable to go on. One time out of ten, it triggers a healthier, more honest and genuine discussion, now that the pent-up “is it okay that I say this?” is out of the bag. I said, “Programs like affirmative action are made to make whites feel better about being racist, because look, we threw all this money at the darkies and they’re still stupid drug addicts on welfare. Obviously we can’t do anything to fix these people.”
Unfortunately, this time, neither thing happened. There was just a general nodding of heads and, “Yeah, white racists, they’re bad,” before a segue into, “There’s this not-white kid in my class who is like soooooo dumb and seriously, you’ve got to figure that’s why he’s even there.”
Okay, so this is a racist thing, obviously, but it’s not the point of my post. Neither is affirmative action the point of my post, because I have a sort of complicated opinion about that. My point is, my white acquaintances presumed an awful lot on our shared ethnicity. They presumed that this was a safe social space to express their racist beliefs, and have them reassured as normal (white), rational, and logical (unracist) beliefs. They presumed that I would either agree, not care, or not disagree enough to argue. And they presumed all that because I am white.
That did not feel like a safe social space to me. As I started to disagree, I could feel the undercurrent of uncomfortable hostility begin to grow. When I went quiet, the hostility just grew in me instead. Which is maybe a little like what it’s like to be not-white. I didn’t feel comfortable making what was obviously a passing chit-chat — “Did you hear about the guy who threw his shoes at Bush? Oh, that’s funny. Yeah, the weather’s been bad. No, school’s okay, except black people are stupid. Hey, how’s your mom?” — into a centerpiece of awkward unexamined beliefs that trigger conflicted rage and guilt. That was not the casual evening I envisioned when I went out for a goddamn burger with some folks I knew.
I didn’t feel comfortable doing that because I knew it would have gone a whole lot of nowhere — liberal white racism is oftentimes as bulwark and unassailable as white power racism — and I would have ended up fuming for days, over people whom I have very little emotional investment in. And that also bothered me. These acquaintances are not the most important people in the world to me, not by far. They are nice enough. I was not seeing us becoming closer friends, but I wasn’t set against that happening. Except, now I am. Because that is not a safe social space for me. Because while, if the stars aligned, I may have been happy to put the effort and energy into forming a deeper, friendlier relationship with them, I am not willing to put the effort and energy into explaining to them that racism is bad, and also, by the way, that was some racist bullshit out of your mouth there. I don’t want to explain that any more than I want to explain to somebody that you don’t come into my house and shit on my rug — they’re adults and they should goddamn know.
This is what comes of being the “right” race in a racist society. You are an assumed depository for vile, racist conversations and opinions, and your assumed compatriots operate under the belief that this is not damaging, enraging, difficult, isolating, or painful to hear. I do not feel like an overtly radical person. On the spectrum of anti-racism, I consider myself a tick to the left of moderate. But even that perception is radical, because to get there, I’ve had to move my liberal white friends a whole football field to the right of moderate, into “I’m not racist racist, but I am better, smarter, and more rational than the hypothetical dark masses that exist in my brain” territory. But just by virtue of believing that incompetent black people have the right to be as proportionally represented in higher education as incompetent white people, I am too radical to be friends with most white people I know. Which, being white and only moderately anti-racist, just about everybody in my life are white people I can’t be friends with.
2. Because I majored in African-American Studies, but am a white and presumably non-threatening liberal girl, I am often called upon to fulfill the “Ask a Black Person” role — that is, the “Ask a Black Person Except Don’t Because I Don’t Know Any Black People So Ask This White Person Instead and Never Wonder What Is Wrong With My Society That I Have to Ask These Questions As If Black People Are An Alien Goddamn Species — That Is Too Big a Question And There Is Nobody to Ask.”
Racism never leads to brevity.
Often, I don’t mind this too much. The fact that they ask already indicates that they’re white people I may be more amenable to talking to about race. And if I can help explain something, great, awesome, word. But just as often, the asking gets into uncomfortable territory. It could be that the question is somewhat unanswerable, or unanswerable by me — it doesn’t matter if I emphasize that I only have an understanding of African-American history, somebody might still ask me something like why black people talk like that, or watch comedians that aren’t funny, or perform some blackface stereotype. Or, it could be, and usually is, that the question is just a disclaimer preface to spouting off some racist shit. This isn’t the nature of questions about race, but I do think it’s the nature of white people — any opening for a discussion on the strange non-white creatures who inhabit our world and walk among us is an opening for the racist bile that boils underneath the surface of nice white folk who aren’t supposed to notice color anymore.
Case in point: a conversation of questions that had been going pretty well with a friend of mine went into this muddy territory, when she asked why black people buy things they can’t afford instead of saving their money. This doesn’t come out of complete and utter stereotyping with no basis — this friend is a social worker who has been in a lot of poor homes with a lot of HDTVs. The racism isn’t in noticing the disparity between poverty and debt-creating unnecessary luxuries. The racism comes in attributing this behavior to one race of people, while simultaneously ignoring the identical behavior of other races of people.
This friend, for example, has recently purchased a house she is barely able to afford. In fact, she has had to ask boarders to move in to assist with rent, and is still barely able to pay utilities and mortgage, not to mention groceries, gas, and all the other necessities of living. I’ve often wondered to myself why in the world she bought a house when she did, or bought the house she did, rather than continue to save money for a year or two longer and purchase a house she could afford. Trying not to get too personal about my friend, I can guess at the reason. She had a kid. While the place she lived in before was definitely serviceable for a family, and really extremely optimal for saving money, I think she felt that once she had a family, she needed a home of her own. That feeling overrode the coldly practical, and all in all, that’s fairly normal.
Now, in a hypothetical world where my friend is not white, here’s a list of the questions somebody would ask me about her behavior as a not white person:
1. Why did she get pregnant when she didn’t have the money for a home?
2. Why did she buy a house she couldn’t afford?
3. Why didn’t she stay where she was and save more money?
4. Obviously where she was, childless and saving money, was a smarter place to be. Why did she make such poor decisions about getting pregnant and moving?
My friend isn’t going to have to face those questions, because she’s white. Nor will she have to face questions about the vacation she took with her tax refund, instead of using that money to pay for home repairs or overdue health check-ups for herself. Nor will she have to face questions about why she occasionally buys organic food from fair trade stores, rather than whatever’s on sale at the big box. She will not face questions about running up credit card debt rather than getting a second job. She will not face any of those questions, not because of the intelligence of her decisions, but because of the color of her skin.
A black woman who moved into a home she could not afford because she got pregnant would be subject to all kinds of humiliating questions about why her race does such stupid, irrational, emotional, unpractical things.
Black debt and white debt are very different creatures in the public mind. Black debt sunk into unnecessary luxuries is a matter of great wonder and contempt; white debt sunk into equally unnecessary luxuries (vacations, organic food, homes, cars) is a matter of course. Because, I think, white people feel they deserve and need these things. It’s part of their definition as white. To not have a home, to shop bargain brands at the shitty supermarket, to ride the bus, to have never gone to a foreign country — those are things “ghetto” people do and have. Non-white people. To be a white person without white debt is not that different from being black, with the possible exception that a white person has a better chance of achieving white debt than non-white people do. Even when black people try to achieve white debt, they are steered into black debt, and then derided for their grasping.
This is all on an individual, interpersonal level. Small potatoes. Because if you want to talk illogical, spiraling, unbelievable debt, you want to talk white people. And, let’s go that final step, you want to talk white men. An economic crisis precipitated by extremely poor decisions and massive greed on a corporate scale, when those corporations are run almost exclusively by white people… but nobody is asking me derisive questions about white people’s spending habits.
Comments are closed.
I really appreciate this piece. “Liberal racism” is a hugely ignored problem. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the Affirmative Action fight with my supposedly liberal and well-educated friends. Reading this was really… satisfying.
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This? Was fantastic. It was smarter than practically anything I’ve read in the past couple weeks about skin privilege, white privilege and the particular hell that is ‘white liberal racism’.
I’ve reached the point that, every time I write about race or white supremacy or privilege, I break down into a rage-filled jelly. And then I turn off comments.
Why can’t you be in MSNBC instead of Pat Buchanan??!!
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Lack of angry fluttering jowls, I suspect.
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I didn’t feel comfortable doing that because I knew it would have gone a whole lot of nowhere — liberal white racism is oftentimes as bulwark and unassailable as white power racism — and I would have ended up fuming for days, over people whom I have very little emotional investment in.
I’ve been in this situation many, many times.
Most recently I was in the car with a vague aquaintance and her mother (we were going to Sydney, where there is a large multicultural setting, especially asian immigrants). The aquaintence says ‘I’m not a racist, but I don’t like asians, they make me nervous’. I say ‘That makes you racist’. ‘No it doesn’t’ ‘Yes it does, that’s the very definition of racism’. After that short conversation, awkwardness descends and I’m fuming. However, I didn’t regret saying it, because it shocked her and her mother. They were expecting the ‘safe with white people’ situation you described, which I yanked away from them.
In Australia, Aboriginals are considered fair game for racism ranging from offensive jokes to outright hatred and the ‘look, we throw money at them and they’re still filthy’ kind.
My best friend, bless her fucking stupid head, has this idea that when she’s drunk it’s ok to write ‘fuck the aborigines’ in the sand at the sand dunes (because it’s traditional aboriginal ground there, she’s making a ‘joke’). I catch her and she runs off apologising – she knows it’s wrong, but I wonder why she has those hostile feelings inside.
She also falls into the ‘I’m not a racist, but I feel really uncomfortable around muslims/asians/lebanese’ etc group. I’ve had a go at her a few times about this.
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I have just spent two hours I don’t have reading your blog (took a Billy-from-Family-Circus trip here from Salon via the LA-Fitness shootings), and I picked this entry to reply, using up another hour to compose, because it is my favorite of all I’ve read so far.
After these hours, I understand that the reason I’ve spent as much time as I have is because I feel safe here. Here, I’m not surrounded by the news of Southern, white, pompous roosters claiming victim status from overly sensitive minorities. Here, I don’t live in a world where a meaningless, insulting word like “reverse-racism” can be taken seriously. Here I don’t have to give myself headaches explaining that I’m not reading too much into the watermelon-patch-dancing/stripper-pole-licking garbage of Transformers 2 (there’s stupid and juvenile, which is what I paid for; and there’s ignorant and vile, which I did not). Here, my exposed-nerve sensitivity about about feminism and race isn’t considered to be some Kool-aide-drinking librul character flaw that my family and Facebook friends have to look past to enjoy me.
You’ve been RSS’d, dude, and I look forward to more when you’re done with the moving stuff, which I m also struggling with (and is the reason do not have the time to be reading the Internets).
So thanks.
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I, too, don’t have time to be replying, but you’re the first person on my blog to call me dude, and that makes you special.
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I found your blog this morning, and this is already my second comment. I just need to say thank you. Nothing more eloquent than that, but it’s truly heartfelt.
I will most definitely still be reading (and catching up on older posts) when you return from the horror-wonderland that is moving.
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I just stumbled across your blog from Kateharding.net and I really fucking love it. It’s also made me feel hugely ashamed of myself.
I have alot of “I’m not racist but…” people that I have to interact. One in particular that I spend alot of time with and uses that exact phrase at least once a week, AND I SAY AND DO NOTHING!
I’m a feminist, and I guess I’ve become complacent in that role, that I was fighting social injustice by telling off assholes who made rape jokes and judged women on a 10 point scale. All the while I ignore or go along with people making racist jokes and doing their whole “I’m not racist but…” spiel. I’m not going to do that anymore, thanks to you.
I love reading your blog!
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Every time I feel like I’m just dragging the world down by not being super radical awesome fighting injustice superhero at every corner, I remind myself that it’s a long, long, long process, and sometimes there are opportunities for huge steps, but 99% of the time it’s going to be baby steps. Anyway, doing anything is better than doing nothing, so if the only thing you manage to do is recognize “I could’ve done something there,” that’s a step. And if next time all you manage to do is appear extremely disapproving, that’s a step. And if next time all you manage to do is turn around and walk away, that’s a step. And if someday you manage to get into the time and the place and the mojo where you really make the speech you always think of later, well, that’s something that’ll look like a huge step to everybody around you, but you’ll know it was just one more baby step built on top of a heap of baby steps you forced yourself to take over years of work.
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you rule!
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I live in Oakland, CA, famous black city of famous black people that are fun to make fun of. I was hanging out in San Francisco with a bunch of random, bitchy, gay non-blacks who were enjoying the privilege of discussing the kind of exemplary pregnant in-debt blacks you referred to.
So, on the topic of saying something inappropriate, I blurted out “well, from the look of things, if HIV got gay men pregnant there’d be a lot of unintentional babies in San Francisco, too”.
The room went silent and the subject was quickly changed.
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“AfricanAmerican black colored uh personofcolor I mean colorblindcolorblindcolorblind,”
I have this problem. PC madness has made it utterly confusing to figure out what term isn’t going to be Really Offensive. I tend to default to ‘black’, because, um, not everyone is American. Or African, for that matter. But it’s confusing and kinda guilt-making.
(Also? The “Why do poor people on welfare buy expensive HDTVs and stuff” sounds like an interesting sociological question to me, independent of race. A way to keep their spirits up and not have to think too much about their situation?)
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I’m from India and most people from the North Eastern states of India have Oriental features. Therefore, a lot of people in India don’t consider them to be Indians. I have friends who call them ‘chinky’ or ‘chink’ obviously referring to their facial features. And, every time I protest, I get the ‘oh, but I don’t mean it in a derogatory way,’ which doesn’t make it any less racist. Then, of course, the standard question after my protest is ‘Well, what would you say to describe them, then?’ Of course, I forgot, let’s just use racist terms to describe people because there’s no other way to describe them. And, these are the very same people who’d get offended if a white person called them ‘brownie.’
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You are a brilliant writer. I haven’t read something so inciteful about race from a white persprective in a very, very, long time. Genius, you are! You should be up there with Dr. Maddow givin’ it to ‘em good. Your blog is incredible. You have something worthwhile to listen too. You and illdoc1 on youtube are wicked smart. Keep it up, wordsmith.
By the way, have you considered doing an occasional video on youtube?
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Okay, here’s me on the internet: “Blah blah blah eloquent spent hours thinking how to phrase this right.”
Here’s me in real life: “Because fucking fuck all I guess just fuck it like I don’t I don’t I don’t even know how to oh shit I just spilled my drink do you think I’m awkward FUCK”
But, um, I’ll put it on my list of something to idly think about. Thanks anyway!
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You are hilarious! Seriously, you should do tv. If not that, writing for a major newspaper.
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I don’t deal with a lot of racism from my friends, but when I worked retail I’d get dumped on by customers. I even had one customer, someone I’ve never seen before, say to me that he thought “things were going to hell in a handbasket because black and white people were dating and marrying each other, and you don’t be like that, OK?, little white lady” I think I told him, stuttering, that I disagreed but I doubt I got the point accross. If I wasn’t in the store, though, I prolly would’ve told him he was racist, but I didn’t use that word because I was behind the counter and I had trouble convincing myself to tell that to a customer’s face, even though I probably should have told him what he said was offensive.
I was humbled by another experience, though. I told an Asian joke that an Asian friend of mine told me to an Asian customer. I didn’t think was very offensive, and I think I felt like the fact an Asian person told it to me and thought it was funny made me think it was OK. The Asian customer didn’t say anything and just left after I rang him up, and I realized afterwords that I had diarrhea of the mouth and just spewed without thinking.
I hope I learned from that. No matter how innocent-seeming I will leave any jokes with a racial element to be said by the people of that race, I shouldn’t do it. Also I made it worse by assuming that customer would want to hear it, that was wrong and the same thing those white racists did to me when they spewed their anti-black hate assuming I was OK with it. I was seriously sick to my stomach after that for quite a while, and I hope that cured my verbal diarrhea.
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My favorite Affirmative Action conversation came while listening to a white female HR director complain about how much Affirmative Action was complicating her job because she was forced to place unqualified candidates into positions to demonstrate compliance.
And I said, “Oh is that how you got *your* job? Last time I checked University of Phoenix isn’t exactly an accredited university. thank godness, for Affirmative Action!”
I am always amused whenever I hear white females complain about Affirmative Action.
As for white liberal racism. I pretty much run screaming from anything too UUish, too “we’re allies, can you do our adopted daughter from Kenya’s hair” and basically anytime white folks evoke the name of some death black activist, it’s usually means bad things for this brown gal.
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Just this morning I was at the gym when an acquaintance, describing his (armenian) family’s antipathy to family member’s dating black people, said “They’re not racist, they just don’t like to mix the blood.”
I don’t really have anything to say about that except that genocide in your history does not justify holding views that are, well, racist.
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Thank you. That helps.
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“That did not feel like a safe social space to me. As I started to disagree, I could feel the undercurrent of uncomfortable hostility begin to grow. When I went quiet, the hostility just grew in me instead. Which is maybe a little like what it’s like to be not-white.”
Yes, that is frequently precisely what it feels like.
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I can gauge my own uselessness on the anti-racist front sometimes by my level of surprise when I learn new things.
Such as: it is not uncommon for me to hear a story of a black woman approached by random stranger white parents, like, in a grocery store or something, and told, “We adopted an African-American daughter, will you be her black adult role model/hair stylist/cultural connection and/or our only black friend? Come over for dinner tonight and we will all watch Roots together, and you can permeate our daughter with diversity by a process that we suspect is much like osmosis and nothing at all like work.” The length of my jaw drop is a viable measurement of my own ignorance, but really, my jaw was just down to my fucking toes the first time I heard that one.
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Thanks you for one of the most intelligent things I’ve read in a while. Keep up the great work!
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Waow enjoyed reading this blogpost. I added your rss to my reader.
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First time here.
I didn’t really expect to get much out of this. So I get about 1/4 of the way into this, and I’m highly skeptical. Slightly hostile, even, which is unusual for me. Point #1 hits me weirdly at first, but I read more and I kinda start warming to it. I get partway into Point #2, and just as I’m like, “wait, I was totally wrong, because I think I actually fucking love this woman,” all of a sudden, this:
HMFS.
I read that several hours ago, and still, I am frigging pole-axed. I keep reading it again and again because my mind is totally blown, on a number of levels. I am surrounded by white people; I’ve observed and studied them my whole life, as a matter of survival. So I seriously thought I knew all I needed to know (and more) about white American perception. But: “to shop bargain brands at the shitty supermarket…”! It’s a revelation, and at the same time, it’s like: of course! How the fuck did I miss this?
I learned something today.
Thank you.
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Hey..
Loved your post! Absolutely loved it. In fact, all of the other ones as well. I have lived in a relationship which had so much wrong with it including this ‘I’m not racist, but…’ and I felt the need to submit to it. Girl that I was! sheesh!
I wish I’d read all of this 5 years ago. I wish I had been a bit more realistic (wiser) rather than Idealistic.
Like someone before me said, ‘You’ve been RSSd dude!’
Cheers!
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I’ve discovered your journal yesterday, and spent hours pouring over it since. As a white, middle class, tall, hetero, tertiary educated male, I obviously wouldn’t know discrimination if it sat on my head and farted.
And reading your blog has filled me with doubt for the way I think I sometimes behaved when I was a younger man. No – I never did anything non-consentual with a girl, ever. Nor would I remain friends with a person who raped or abused anyone, or made jokes about it, or defined a racial group as a whole. But I fear that I have not always fought the good fight, and know that sometimes I have been a bit of a pig.
It’s so easy for someone in my position to not grapple with ‘hard’ or ‘uncomfortable’ issues. But really, we all know that’s no excuse.
I am going to take your little reply up there, and make it a litany for myself. I am going to keep reading your blog, and keep working to make myself into a man. A real one. One who can be proud of every thing he does. The way men should be, not the macho stereotype.
Thank you for letting me understand that it is a journey for everyone. That even a person who writes as intelligently and passionately as you do about issues of equality still struggles with making themselves better at dealing with it all.
Thanks mostly for that little piece there about baby steps – for it has acted like an invitation for me to join you on this journey.
Time to learn.
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I just found your blog the other day and I have to comment here to say how very blown away I am by your writing and your views. I have enjoyed every single post I’ve written and I’ve been speechless at how well you articulate your views. You make me think. You make me wonder about myself and my views and if I’m the person I think I am. You make me reflect. Thank you for putting yourself out here. You’re pretty much my hero of the moment.
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I just want to 2nd Jeremiah because I just discovered, and subsequently spent approx 4 hours reading, you today and suddenly feel a strange peace inside I’ve been needing, quite badly, for a long time. I feel validated, safe, consoled, and connected here, and like I’m not crazy for feeling, thinking, saying and arguing some of these EXACT points with everyone from strangers to family members to FB friends, 95% of whom do not take it well, at all, leaving me feeling very isolated, unappreciated and frustrated as hell.
Now, I feel recharged. Thank you, Harriet (dude). You’re a godsend.
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You mentioned in the post that you have mixed feelings about Affirmative Action, and while I realize that’s not the main subject of the post I am interested to hear more about your ideas on the topic. (You may have blogged about it before and if that’s the case I’m sorry to bother you here–I just discovered your blog a couple hours ago through a friend and haven’t yet given it a thorough read-through.)
I’m especially interested in your opinion because, like the situation you described at the beginning of this post, I have had people assume I am a safe person to be racist around because I’m white, and that is so far from the truth it physically makes me want to punch people when they pull that shit. So I think we probably have a similar perspective on dealing with discrimination, and the need for people to consider their words and actions carefully.
I absolutely believe that we need policies in place to ensure there is equal opportunity for people of all races, and at its core that is the intent of Affirmative Action.
At the same time, I once was denied a seat in an IB middle school, despite being the top student at my elementary school in the same district, because they already had “too many white females” (to paraphrase my rejection letter), which, to me at the time, felt like nothing less than racism and sexism falsely labeled as “spreading equality.”
Do I think the non-white and/or non-female who got my seat instead did not deserve to attend that school? Of course I don’t think that way. That person deserved the opportunity as much as anyone else. But it led me to seriously question the effectiveness of Affirmative Action as a measure against discrimination. If it’s denying a legitimately intelligent, hard working, top of the class student a seat in a coveted institution solely because of her race and gender, is it not in fact *leading to* discrimination?
As I said above, this is rather tangential to your post’s original topic; I am mentioning it anyway because your comment on your opinion about Affirmative Action was very brief, leaving me eager to know more, and you seem like someone who would have intelligent insight about the topic.
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From what I’ve seen, it’s definitely independent of race. Note also that “rent-to-own” businesses primarily target the poor; I wonder how many of the HDTVs the social worker saw were actually being rented for $25 a month, eventually to be paid off at three to four times the price of a TV purchased new all at once.
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I think you’re dead-on in describing the intent of affirmative action, and I am fully in support of that intent. I think affirmative action doesn’t go far enough. And I think it’s specifically designed to not go far enough, and, in fact, drops so short as to be harmful. In everything I’m about to say, please note that I in no way support getting rid of affirmative action (though in its current state, I do consider it already gotten rid of).
What affirmative action does is solid enough: assisting people with the skills and abilities in entering the field of competition, when otherwise they may not have been let in the door. Problem is, affirmative action should be the final piece in a whole social program of uplift, instead of the first and only piece. Affirmative action doesn’t address schools that are now completely segregated again, with abysmal funding. Affirmative action doesn’t address prenatal care for mothers. Affirmative action doesn’t address overrepresentation in the criminal or child welfare system. Affirmative action steps in once a child has managed to somehow dodge every other bullet we’ve shot at them, and all it says is, “Okay, this one very small time, we will not shoot a bullet at you. Welcome to a nice job/good school! Oh, by the way, your boss/teacher may still be racist, and everybody else in your workplace/school is a different color than you — hope that’s fun — and most of them will probably think you are stupid and unqualified. Good luck!”
I view affirmative action like a lottery given to the oppressed. In exchange for beating, killing, raping, arresting, stealing from, segregating, debasing, insulting you every day of your life, one day ONE of you might get to go to college with everybody who has beat, killed, raped, arrested, stole from, segregated, debased, and insulted you. And then all the privileged people get to pat themselves on the back for a job well done — we are so compassionate and loving, let’s put a Dr. King quote on the wall and cry a little about how we helped that ONE kid — and, alternatively, get to fly into a frothing rage every time the oppressed demand civil rights that sort of actually resemble equality. I mean, they have AFFIRMATIVE ACTION now, and I have to put up with this stupid black kid in my class even though he shouldn’t be there, so seriously, what are they even complaining about?
I also think affirmative action was designed to have such shaky constitutional principles that it could only result in eventually being shut down, which it now has since that bunch of white firefighters demanded that their rights to promotion outweigh everybody else’s rights to not-racism. And now that it has been shut down, we’ll start a new narrative, a “creating laws to enforce civil rights doesn’t work, remember affirmative action?” narrative. So, we effectively created a law that assists the lowest possible number of oppressed people, makes the oppressors feel really nice about themselves, and is so riddled with procedural problems that we will be able to shut it down eventually and pretend that civil rights will never work, though it surely is sweet idea, thanks for bringing it up. Sounds like a win-win for the oppressors. Nobody gets help, nobody has to change, and eventually, we will have manufactured evidence about why we can’t ever help again. I think affirmative action was a con job from start to finish.
Again, that still doesn’t mean I don’t support affirmative action, because its intent is solid, and because something is better than nothing — even if I disparage that it only helped ONE kid, that one kid still got help, and that’s not nothing. But affirmative action (as we conceived of it in the law) is still based on some idea of a zero-sum game. If the oppressed get to access all the social institutions the oppressors have taken for granted, suddenly the oppressors won’t be able to be doctors anymore and and and and YOUR CHILDREN WILL HAVE TO GO TO UGLY SCHOOLS and and and YOUR DAUGHTER WILL BE SAVED FROM A FIRE BY A BLACK MAN ARGLBLARFHLDKHALJFEAIL. In actuality, a real system of equality would mean the oppressors would have to compete, for once, because we don’t now. Every minority shot down by the five million bullets we aim their way is one more person you don’t have to worry about when you go out for that internship. Every kid that drops out of high school or gets sent to prison is one more person you don’t have to worry about during college entrance exams. The pool of competition for white people is remarkably small, and we obviously designed affirmative action to keep it small. We also obviously designed affirmative action, and created a narrative around it, that lets us believe that we aren’t competiting as we should, but are letting people past the competition unexamined. We’re not. We’re giving a very small amount of people the right to compete against us, but we act like that’s some phenomenal fucking gift, and if those people aren’t grateful, well, you know how they are. I’d like to see affirmative action turned into something other than a zero-sum game, and see it extend from birth to death. That is, I want all women to have access to reproductive rights, regardless of class and race and gender. I want all mothers to have access to prenatal care. I want all children to have access to good schools that are funded as if we value education and value all children. I want a million different things to happen, and at the end of that, I STILL want affirmative action, because universal health care and good schools and good police forces doesn’t make people any less racist in their daily interactions, even those who don’t want to be. And that’s what affirmative action SHOULD be: the final piece of compensation for a history of racism and sexism, instead of the only compensation, and a compensation designed to foster more oppression instead of less. Such as: you being told there were “too many white females”; that’s an affirmative action that has been designed to breed hostility among the oppressors.
So: complicated, because I think affirmative action as we know it is a fucking joke and a goddamn mess, but that doesn’t mean I am against the concept of affirmative action in general. In fact, I’m adamantly for it, and I want to see it far more radical and white-frightening than it is now, in its very debased form.
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Thought you of all people would appreciate this, along with the way “That’s because you ain’t oppressed, you rock-stupid, patriarchial motherfucker …” has officially become my favorite line of the year.
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K., in addition to what Harriet said – I think you’re directing your anger in the wrong direction. The issue isn’t that they rejected you because you’re a white female, but because the school was so racially imbalanced that they had to actually turn white people away who, if the school only admitted people on merit, would have been able to attend. In effect the school was saying “We’re already indulging in racism and sexism but we’ve kinda hit our ceiling.”
Us white people get a lot of affirmative action, but it’s not called that and sometimes we don’t even know about it. (As a woman you’ve likely seen this in operation to protect men’s interests.)
My dad was an administrator for a municipal agency in a heavily African-American city. He was one of a handful of white guys who worked there. Not long before he retired, there was a new uber-supervisory position that was going to be created, but through bureaucratic means it was essentially stalled until after he retired, and the obvious but unspoken reason is that they (and by “they” I mean the administrators and officials involved, not “all black people”) didn’t want a white guy running the place. When I asked dad about it later I thought he would be angry about the unfairness, but he genuinely wasn’t – his attitude was “well, can you blame them for not wanting to have another white guy telling them all what to do?”
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I want to agree with what you generally said here, with a caveat that I didn’t think K. was angry at the person who was admitted instead of her; I think she correctly identified that, while there was some serious bullshit going on here, the fact that a qualified person achieved a place in a prestigious program wasn’t the bullshit at all. Rather, the way affirmative action was interpreted by the people who ran the program — that only so many qualified non-white men should be allowed to compete with non-white men, because god forbid you have a minority of non-white men! — was the bullshit. But I may have interpreted that wrong.
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I discovered your blog reading about your Google Buzz frustrations and stumbled upon this post. As an American of African descent this is one of the most hones and poignant pieces about race I have ever read. Having been in debt and pulling myself “up by my bootstraps” I know exactly what you mean. I have watched my white friends continue to spend money on vacations and extra cars while complaining about their debt and seen their visceral reaction to any “extra” purchase I made in the midst of the same time of financial situation they found themselves in.
I also found this piece so “real” is that I am generally considered the “comfortable” black girl in the room. I am articulate and I guess I “don’t talk black” so many of my white friends seem to feel ok with running all of their inquiries about the mysteries of black behavior by me. This is probably because of my “they don’t know how they sound so don’t make them upset” mentality, but I have found that many of my white friends say things with a racist tinge without being at all aware of how it might be perceived outside of the confines of white conversations or conversations with the “normal” (which I always presume means “white-like”) black girl. For instance, I think if I hear “you are so pretty for a black girl” one more time in my life I may lose it. I always respond with thank you because honestly I am at a loss for the proper response to what is clearly a back-handed compliment. I mean I am attractive but you would think that these people have never seen Beyonce…hello! Anyway, I am rambling but this post is excellent and should really be mandatory reading for people of all races as I think it may provide a basis for reasonable dialogue and respect amongst all of us. Keep up the good work!
-Normal Black Girl in TX
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HJ,
This was truly an amazing read!
Going to link this for my readers.
-Tony
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Nuria,
I’m not publishing your comment as it is. This site practices fat acceptance. Nobody gets called a pig here.
While I agree with your sentiment — organic food shouldn’t be a luxury, and it would be great if everybody ate it — price, availability, and convenience aren’t consistent across the board. To be able to integrate organic food into your diet, you need 1) a store that sells organic food, 2) a store that sells a wide selection of organic food (it doesn’t do you any good if a store only sells organic beef and you’re a vegetarian), 3) a store that sells organic food at an affordable cost, and 4) reliable and safe transportation to that store. These aren’t things that are available to everybody.
What I was talking about here was the phenomenon I saw in my friend at that time. She had the privilege of living near a co-op, so transportation wasn’t an issue, which was good, because she couldn’t afford a lot of gas money. But the co-op had very expensive food, and she often couldn’t afford the organic stuff. She kept buying it, even when it went on credit. I was wondering why, and then one day she came home from a big-box, where she’d had to purchase conventional produce because she was out of money. She couldn’t stop denigrating all the food she had just bought as “ghetto.” So, my observation here was that part of her desire to buy organic food she couldn’t afford wasn’t out of concern for her health or the environment, but concern for her identification as a middle-class white person.
There are a lot of reasons people have the food habits they do. Boiling it all down to ignorance illustrates, to me, how few obstacles are between you and acquiring a diversity of edible and affordable food. That is a very privileged position. Not everybody is so lucky. I could admonish the people on this site that they must always buy organic food, but shaming people into purchasing the “right” food does nothing to address the reasons they don’t, and I can’t speak for all the reasons people don’t purchase the foods I think would make them healthier. There are billions of people in the world, and they each have lives and circumstances that are very different than mine. I can tell the world how great organic food is, but that does nothing to solve a lack of public transportation, affordable cars, economic stability, redlining, or availability of decent grocery stores with decent produce.
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I don’t know where else to share this, but I read it, and my first thoughts were, “Oh, hell yeah,” followed by, “I wonder if Harriet Jacobs has read it.”
http://ephphatha-poetry.blogspot.com/2010/04/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html
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Harriet:
Re.: “They presumed that this was a safe social space to express their racist beliefs, and have them reassured as normal (white), rational, and logical (unracist) beliefs.” You may have already read Pamela Perry’s “White Means Never having to Say You’re Ethnic,” from the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, but if you haven’t. I think you’ll really dig it. I can send a PDF if you like.
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Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for this!
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Great post. My own feelings on AA in schools are really conflicted, but not because of the white/black issue. My problem is the way that the system allows a lot of popular stereotypes about Asians to come into play; stuff like, “that Asian with the perfect scores who is interested in science must be a soulless study grind, and we don’t want that here.” Asians are actually considered “overrepresented minority” in colleges, and it’s more of a disadvantage to apply as one than to apply as white. So I think “holistic” evaluations of people that include race are always going to encourage people to let their stereotypes become involved, and I don’t like that. But on the other hand I realize how important it is to have these systems, what with America’s institutionalized racism. So I’m torn here. But to be honest, before seeking out and reading posts like yours about why other people who are against AA, I didn’t know that white people’s opinions about it were shaped by generalized antipathy towards dark people so much, and it’s enlightening to see this side of the issue, even if it makes more torn.
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Excellent post. I found your site today and you really have me hooked. Very refreshing point of view.
Im black and I have gotten into the Affirmative Action debate with supposedly liberal, “color-blind”, urbane, white people. It was getting too frustrating, I was at the point were I just said my piece and let them keep chatting their bullshit. Coming into the blogosphere as really opened my eyes to this sort of thing.
Again, thanks for the wonderful insights. Looking forward to reading more.
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thanks so much for being around on the internet and taking the time to write your thoughts. they’ve helped me a lot in examining the racism I’ve absorbed and accepted as normal. You’ve mentioned before you have a kind of circling method of getting to your point- but I’m so glad you do. It really clarifies things for me, all the little points I thought I had already figured out but didn’t really. thanks for being around.
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I am intrigued, challenged, satisfied, captivated & fascinated by every single thing that I read that you have written. Your thought processes are a joy to me. I know where you’re going but rarely do I expect the route that you take me on. I just wanna say thanks.
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