[UPDATE: I wanted to elevate a comment I made downthread since it adds to my thoughts about problem-solving. It’s below the fold.]
I was clearly way out of the blogfeedback loop — I missed the controversy over Amanda’s book. I’ve been so bogged down here in NC primary fever over at my pad (prez and state races), the Day of Silence, a family member in the hospital and — can you believe this — the day job, that people obviously thought I was simply ignoring this pot boiling over on the homebase stove over the color-aroused use of native savage images from “classic” comics.
I think Skippy emailed me about it last week, and left me some links and I promptly filed the email away and moved on to cover the Obama Town Hall in Raleigh.
Well since the train has already left the station — with Amanda’s forthright, all-laid bare apology already out there, all I can say is yes, those images are inappropriate, and certainly would have been called out if, say, someone on the right used them in a tome. The difference, since Amanda obviously wasn’t attempting to promote a white supremacy theme in the book, is the blind spot of white privilege, in this case Seal Press, which has an apology on its site.
Please know that neither the cover, nor the interior images, were meant to make any serious statement. We were hoping for a campy, retro package to complement the author’s humor. That is all. We were not thinking.As folks know, I discuss race matters a lot and this deserves some attention because this kind of blind spot occurs all the time, and it’s not only in the context of race (or, as we also see in the imagery, gender). The blind spot is that some white progressives, in their zeal to believe we are a post-racial society, in this case the publisher, just assumed everyone only sees camp in the images.As an organization, we need to look seriously at the effects of white privilege. We will be looking for anti-racist trainings offered here in the Bay Area. We want to incorporate race analysis into our work.
So you might ask, what did I think when I looked at the comic book white Barbie doll -proportioned warrior chick opening a can of whoop-ass on the savage negroes?
Hmmm. I’ll just think “aloud,” — since we’re all friends here, of course — and I’ll give honest-to-dog answers (I guess this is a peek into my brain, so apologies in advance).
* “That looks like a Marvel comic book - I wonder if the artist is Jack Kirby…or maybe John Buscema?” (my brother and I collected comics back in the day)
* “Man, I need to pull out that awesome Jonny Quest DVD I got for Christmas (original series please, not the later crap) — I think some of those episodes have ethnic and racial stereotypes just as heinous as this!”
* Uh, oh…this is the sh*t that hit Amanda’s fan.”
What does the above mean? I have no idea; you all can armchair analyze, I’m just glad the dust is settling on this one. What’s most important is that people need to keep discussing race in an open and honest way, instead of sweeping it under the rug or automatically running to defensive corners.
Interestingly, I was on the air today discussing how we have trouble taking on productive conversations about race. More below the fold.
Speaking of race matters, I was on the Mike Signorile Show on SIRIUS OutQ 109 today to tackle why it’s hard to have productive discussions about race, given the environment of denial and defensiveness that has built up around the subject.
Use the player below or click here for the MP3.
We examined how both Oprah and Condi Rice recently received a cold splash of water in the face to remind them of their blackness — and thus (in the eyes of many who somehow saw them as “post-racial” figures before) they now part of the secret Black Radical Trojan Horse Agenda, a group apparently as dangerous to our culture as The Homosexual Agenda.
In Oprah’s case, when she came out in strong support of Barack Obama a good number of her white female viewers weren’t happy and let her know that she supported him “only because he’s black.
In Condi’s case, she gave mild, straightforward kudos to Obama for his speech on race (it was important that Mr. Obama gave it for a whole host of reasons.”) and that caused a bigot eruption in Freeperland, which up until this point wanted her VP. All of a sudden her blackness was out in the open and they didn’t like what they saw. A sampling:
Is she getting ready to back the candidacy of B. Hussein Obama, or what????Anyway, we also discussed the complete lack of followup to Obama’s major speech on race, and how the MSM has gone right back to placing race into the context of the political horse race, not delving deeper into what is behind the demographics of the folks in Ohio and Pennsylvania.clue condi seems to have been praying at the alter of rev run wright and b. HUSSEIN’S racist church…no wonder clue condi is such a fan of the f’n pali muzzie terrorists and wants to fund their terrorism of Israel…jorge bush should get rid of this incompetent…and many republicans want this a-hole as a VP???
This is the least racist nation on the planet. Tons of affirmative action and welfare money available. If you don’t like it GTFO. Find a better place to live like Zimbabwe maybe
For instance, all these alleged blue-collar lunch bucket folks who don’t vote for Obama - is it really about race? If it is, as the talking heads continue to bleat, why aren’t reporters going out to do stories on why this is so? Interview some of these voters who cite that race is a factor, and dig deeper?
* Is it that they hold stereotypical views of blacks based on views because of how they were raised, or, say perp walks on TV?
* Do they have any black friends, neighbors or co-workers they are close to?
* What about race troubles them — affirmative action? Crime?
* Is it the “fear of a black planet” revolution kind of thing?
Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have discussions about the above — to be able to have these questions explored without fear of reprisal and denial? The reporters dance endlessly around the issue, but make all sorts of assumptions that tell us precious little about why race matters to voters, choosing to focus on whether they do. Willingness to look at the former is the key to making progress. I don’t have faith that we’ll see much reporting from that vantage point.
Update from my comments downthread:
What’s interesting and painful to see is that, even after Barack Obama’s speech, too many people really don’t have the tools in their emotional toolboxes to 1) call out something they feel is a color aroused bomb, or 2) know how to react when the bomb is tossed out there.
Lacking the tools to dismantle the bomb, the involved parties are either:
1) blown up because they are paralyzed with fear as to what to do next,
2) blown up because they are sitting in front of the bomb arguing what to do about the ticking device, blaming each other for forgetting the tools,
3) run in opposite directions to avoid the explosion, and learn nothing from the experience.
I do all of this thinking aloud about improving the dialogue on race because it helps us all, myself included, figure out what tools we all need to pack to dismantle the bomb the next time we “find” one.
Doing post-mortems on whatever the last color arousal f*ckup — no matter the cause, regardless of parties involved — is important, but not if we’re screaming at one another, all while trying to convince ourselves that we are more self-aware (or less racist) that the person sitting on the bomb, tied to it because of what they said or did. In the end, too much of the righteous anger ends up being the focus of the discussion, rather than the root causes of implicit bias, and that we need to own up to them to put any rational discussion into context.
Progressives really have a problem on this front, because the painful realization that they don’t have the tools often turns into hand-wringing, embarrassment and silence. For some, they may have a hard time thinking about the programming they’ve received in sheltered or intolerant families growing up, reconciling learned bigotry from people they love. For others, confrontation is simply best avoided because they feel the problem is too large, or that they haven’t the “expertise” as the oppressed group to say anything meaningful (that’s what I see way too often).
The color-aroused right has a different problem - those folks have no problem owning their biases, but in most cases they don’t give a rip about finding the tools because they feel there’s nothing in it for them to address racial misunderstanding. To correct themselves would mean equal treatment, and thus a threat to their white privilege.
For the historically oppressed minority group in question, the problem seems to be that they are tired of waiting for the folks in the dominant culture to get a clue and own their implicit biases and get to work on correcting that behavior. That’s when the defensive explosions of “are you really that stupid/bigoted/racist” occur and shut the conversations down. It does get tiring to see the same ignorant (blind spot) or malicious race-based “mistakes” occur, particularly when there are plenty of people quick to defend/give a pass to the person making the faux pas and tell the minority to get over it. Little useful analysis is done, no one is interested in acquiring any tools.
And the next bomb the parties find themselves in front of will go off, just as it did the last time. We have to break the cycle.
The blind spot is that white progressives, in their zeal to believe we are a post-racial society, in this case the publisher, just assumed everyone only sees camp in the images.
Yeah, but…
There is no more detailed way to say this, because I’m not outing myself here–too much has been said under this pseudonym for that–but…Seal Press has had this conversation before at least once that I know of.
So I’m not the only white progressive who see those and similar images centralizing the white experience as, primarily, restrictive and limited. Not primarily as camp.
YMMV, but all the work I’ve done in expanding my gaze beyond the white-is-default perspective I was raised with still leaves me white. And progressive.
Which to me says, there is a way to have the conversation yet there is no need to let anyone off the hook.
How in the hell did five white people (at least) not see those images?
I think that people would be a bit more accepting of Amanda’s apology for this, if not for the brownfemipower dustup. I was not a brownfemipower reader, so I’m dreadfully lacking in context on the issue, but it certainly seems that it warrants at least a mention from her on here.
How in the hell did five white people (at least) not see those images?
damned if i know, phoenix. and like you, THAT is what i want to know!
but what’s heartbreaking is that nobody is *really* asking that question to hear an answer. they are just out for blood. and pam’s absolutely right, no good comes of that construction. it’s not an open and honest discussion. it’s a public stockade.
I amended my comment to “some white progressives” because of course not everyone has the blind spot.
Clearly some people choose to remain blind to their biases, others choose to do something about it. For those who continue not to “get it” these folks may have chosen for themselves a narrow, comfortable environment (no minority friends, coworkers, etc. they can relate to) and that doesn’t place any pressure on them to see beyond their limited worldview.
I have to say that the first thing I noticed about the pictures is the woman’s outfit: man, does that look old-fashioned! I suppose it looked racy at the time, but now it looks positively chaste. (Sort of an inverse process works for men’s shorts: the outfits basketball players wore twenty years ago now look almost gay.)
Honestly, Pam, I would assert that just about every white progressive DOES have a blind spot. The whole point of it is, you don’t know it’s there. We’ve grown up in it, we’ve been steeped in it. The only way to get rid of its vestiges is to actually have someone turn your head and say “LOOK. FIX,” and even then, you might not take care of the entirety of the blind spot. Or, there are other blind spots. But you don’t know about them until you make an ass of yourself.
(I’m cross-posting a little here, I apologize to anyone who’s getting sick of me.)
I was raised to be a progressive, but I was also raised in a racist culture of white dominance with a whole history behind it. I have actually said the “black people make great athletes because white people spent generations breeding them to be stronger” and thought it was a compliment at the time because it had been passed on as conventional wisdom about how awesome black people are. I didn’t realize that “squaw” was a slur until I used it in front of a Native American and got a dressing-down. If I’d had any idea that these were offensive at the time I wouldn’t have looked like such an utter dipshit because I wouldn’t have said them… even if I was still digesting the underlying meaning of them.
Blind spots happen, and they suck, the shame and defensiveness I felt after having one pointed out to me by a single person was overwhelming. To have one’s blind spot dissected in the full view of the blogosphere… (shudder).
That word sounds like something you’d name a Muppet… and these folks want to be take seriously as adults?
I realize that I am blind to my biases, and one thing I have been wondering about lately is why I dismissed the BrownFemiPower controversy as “groundless.”
This is not at all to suggest that I think Amanda appropriated or plagiarized, but simply to recognize that I knew *nothing* about the history of BFP’s writing at the crossroads of immigration and gender, yet was willing and eager to invalidate the claim that BFP might have been a “source” text for Amanda.
I felt like a jerk, and realized my response was rooted in a favorable bias towards Amanda. However, I realized at the same time that I was making up profoundly ignorant statements to the tune of “everyone blogs about this,” when really not that many people do.
I hope BFP is going to make a comeback. At first I was sort of like, “Anyone who shuts their blog down and deletes the archive must be sick and tired of blogging and looking for an excuse to quit.” But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if that impulse to delete was a painful response to how she felt that many people were treating her: delete, ignore, reject the validity of the argument before understanding what the argument is.
I think part of the problem is that a lot of white liberals like me tend to think of racism as being entirely the David Dukes and George Allens of the world. We (correctly) know we aren’t that, and so tend to totally blind ourselves to anything shy of the Klan. (This is just a guess based on my personal mindset—I thought that way back in college.)
The problem with that model of racism is that it totally cuts off discussion about our blindnesses. When we treat racism as a dichotomy where the only possibilities are “not a racist bone in my body” and George Allen, then there’s no way even think about the issue—and the moment someone tries to call us on anything we end up reacting as though we were being accused of keeping hoods in our basements.
I suspect this is what happened in the earlier Seal Press issue. They were accused (correctly) of using a racist image, and in their heads translated that to “you’re a bunch of gorram White Power Activists.” Instead of trying to figure out why they were getting called out, they overreacted, and responded with “WE ARE NOT RACISTS, YOU OVERSENSITIVE JERKS!” That’s a non sequitur, but makes sense if you think of racism as being Klan or nothing.
meh, cyber suicide is so passe. Big deal. Ten new blogs is created each seconds if I remember it correctly from last technocrati stat.
>”Blind spots happen, and they suck, the shame and defensiveness I felt after having >one pointed out to me by a single person was overwhelming. To have one’s blind spot > dissected in the full view of the blogosphere…”
I honestly believe that would make me curl up into a very tiny ball.
I really couldn’t see the racism in the illustrations myself in spite of being told it was there. I mean I understood and understand that they are racist and why, it was just hard to see. I think because I look at them, get the era, get the point in conjunction with the chapter heading, then I stop. I think that’s my white privlege in action. The offensive part doesn’t hit me because they’re just images that don’t have any relation to me. That’s what makes reading blogs by all sorts of people pleases me so much. The things I learn both about other views and myself.
I don’t in any way mean to imply I don’t think the images are a big deal. I think they are. I was just saying I can understand how it could be missed by somebody white like me.
That is the main reason I’ve steered clear of saying anything on any of the various discussions of this incident. Clearly Amanda and Seal fucked up. Equally clearly (to me) they suffered from blindness, not malice. As a white woman, though, I’m not the one offended so it’s not my call as to what an appropriate response is.
I’m pretty sure my response to being in Amanda’s position would be something strongly resembling catatonia. Which is why my blog has almost no political commentary of any kind.
I love how Pam is so calm when everyone around her is fighting to death.
I don’t know how you do it Pam. But please keep doing it.
How in the hell did five white people (at least) not see those images?
My guess, having worked a little bit in this universe, is that, in combination with the general white privilege thing that has been discussed to death already, it’s simply an issue of an overworked and understaffed group of people who don’t get enough sleep and don’t have enough well-rested eyes to make sure that stupid mistakes aren’t made. Also, noticing that a private design firm is partially credited on the back cover, and that this book went to press during Perseus Books’s acquisition of Seal, I wonder whether part of the problem is multiple groups of people, with multiple levels of awareness, did not communicate well and were not on the same page. Certainly bringing groups of people in who are not necessarily interested in social justice issues has something to do with it.
thx for the link, pam, and thx for your input on amanda’s situation.
I love how Pam is so calm when everyone around her is fighting to death.
dunno about her, but outside of repeated facepalms, I’ve generally maintained by cool by reaffirming just how empty the whole thing is.
You ever been to a kitschy shops that sell pseudohippie-but-modern stuff, so, fancy soaps, candles, and these mass produced Yixing teapots, that hold maybe 3 fl. oz?
someone must be working extra hard to cram this tempest in that tiny fucking teapot.
Amanda done fucked up, in this case “did not personally double check the images used in her book, which was pretty dumb considering once before the cover image was a problem.” which is admittedly pretty bone headed.
She apologized, the publishers apologized. an actual apology even, as opposed to a “I’m sorry if you were offended” apology. Some people say “apology accepted, and thank you for being sincere about it.” some people said “NOT accepted, either because I don’t think it’s enough or because I don’t think you’re sincere.” At which point many announced their intent to leave for less racist or “less feminist because feminism doesn’t care about POC” waters. at which point some people decided to argue “YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT IT AND NO ONE IS LESS RACIST” which just goes into a big cycle of escalating stupidity with nobody discussing calmly or arguing in good faith, because everyone’s defensiveness triggers are up, when in fact the correct response then is “well fuck you too” and move the fuck on.
There is no further discussion to be had. None. not even a little. You can use the kerfuffle as a jumping off point to discuss tangential but related issues of racism, white privilege, editorial processes, Seal Press’s feminist and anti-racist bona fides, and issues of POC in the greater feminist movement.
in the orders of shit-I-give-a-fuck-about, the illustrations used in the first printing of a book I’m probably not actually going to get around to reading for at least a year if not longer of a political book which would be a trumpeted success if it sold 20,000 copies is somewhere below advocating for reducing the carbon footprint of a Quaker Cereal factory in town.
So yes, reasonably calm, aside from the greater appreciation I have for my mother’s cool demeanor when my younger brother and I, idiots that we were, would make a profound scene in public over some stupid shit.
As a white woman, though, I’m not the one offended so it’s not my call as to what an appropriate response is.
FWIW (and, like Pam, I’ve been mercifully unaware of the recent feminist blogosphere blowups, thank god), this statement, while well-intentioned, is part of the problem.
I get that the intention here is to show respect and acknowledge one’s own limitations. OTOH, you know, white women should be offended by racism, too.
The point of course, and it’s been surely done to death in the other thread, is that the images are so campy that the present audience can’t read them as written. Is there any group of easily caricatured men whose depiction wouldn’t get up anyone’s nose? Apart from Scotsmen, that is. Something about kilts.
Another excellent post by Pam.
Pam writes “For instance, all these alleged blue-collar lunch bucket folks who don’t vote for Obama - is it really about race?”.f it is, as the talking heads continue to bleat, why aren’t reporters going out to do stories on why this is so? Interview some of these voters who cite that race is a factor, and dig deeper?”
I totally agree, that reporters need to dig a lot lot deeper on this issue.
I think it’s a big mistake to automatically conclude, without any empirical or even much anecdotal evidence, that a vote for Hillary was in essence an anti-black vote. The building trades union I work for endorsed Hillary and spent a lot resources rallying the rank and file to support her. There is no evidence as far as I can tell that this was in anyway racial. IMO the endorsement was based on the fact that she was the front runner at the time it was given.
And that’s not say there isn’t an anti-black vote among working class whites. I’d just like to see the evidence of what percentage it is– 2%? 5%? 10%? 20%? And also as Pam mentioned maybe there is one or two racially oriented issues that may be causing an anti-Obama vote? I’d like to see some more coverage, in this regards from both the MSM and alternative media (bloggers included).
http://clintonista.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/as-for-the-symbolism-war-quod-erat-demonstrandum/
I love how Pam is so calm when everyone around her is fighting to death.
Perhaps the calm comes from being blissfully ignorant long enough about the matter.
What’s interesting and painful to see is that, even after Barack Obama’s speech, too many people really don’t have the tools in their emotional toolboxes to 1) call out something they feel is a color aroused bomb, or 2) know how to react when the bomb is tossed out there.
Lacking the tools to dismantle the bomb, the involved parties are either:
1) blown up because they are paralyzed with fear as to what to do next,
2) blown up because they are sitting in front of the bomb arguing what to do about the ticking device, blaming each other for forgetting the tools,
3) run in opposite directions to avoid the explosion, and learn nothing from the experience.
I do all of this thinking aloud about improving the dialogue on race because it helps us all, myself included, figure out what tools we all need to pack to dismantle the bomb the next time we “find” one.
Doing post-mortems on whatever the last color arousal f*ckup — no matter the cause, regardless of parties involved — is important, but not if we’re screaming at one another, all while trying to convince ourselves that we are more self-aware (or less racist) that the person sitting on the bomb, tied to it because of what they said or did. In the end, too much of the righteous anger ends up being the focus of the discussion, rather than the root causes of implicit bias, and that we need to own up to them to put any rational discussion into context.
Progressives really have a problem on this front, because the painful realization that they don’t have the tools often turns into hand-wringing, embarrassment and silence. For some, they may have a hard time thinking about the programming they’ve received in sheltered or intolerant families growing up, reconciling learned bigotry from people they love. For others, confrontation is simply best avoided because they feel the problem is too large, or that they haven’t the “expertise” as the oppressed group to say anything meaningful (that’s what I see way too often).
The color-aroused right has a different problem - those folks have no problem owning their biases, but in most cases they don’t give a rip about finding the tools because they feel there’s nothing in it for them to address racial misunderstanding. To correct themselves would mean equal treatment, and thus a threat to their white privilege.
For the historically oppressed minority group in question, the problem seems to be that they are tired of waiting for the folks in the dominant culture to get a clue and own their implicit biases and get to work on correcting that behavior. That’s when the defensive explosions of “are you really that stupid/bigoted/racist” occur and shut the conversations down. It does get tiring to see the same ignorant (blind spot) or malicious race-based “mistakes” occur, particularly when there are plenty of people quick to defend/give a pass to the person making the faux pas and tell the minority to get over it. Little useful analysis is done, no one is interested in acquiring any tools.
And the next bomb the parties find themselves in front of will go off, just as it did the last time. We have to break the cycle.
Pam, in all blunt honesty, it would often be easier for me to ignore these issues and hide behind privilege, but your blogging about the importance of dialogue has been a reminder to me that it wouldn’t be right.
Damn, Pam; I couldn’t articulate it all that well in a gazillion years. You rock OUT LOUD…
But I’ll add a fourth bullet point to your above list:
4. The parties can then take the bomb and make “the negative a positive”- use it as an opportunity to discuss, to listen, and to learn.
Learn HOW such a mistake was made, learn WHY it hurts, degrades, and continues a destructive and devisive path, and learn how to recognize symptoms as to STOP IN ITS TRACKS any other such potential incident. And somehow… calmly and with respect on all sides.
Pam,
My problem with Amanda’s apology - and I’m not alone - is that while she apologizes for the images, she says nothing about the pattern which led to using those images.
A pattern which has been discussed at length since Seal Press had its confrontation with Blackamazon then Amanda caught flack over the brownfemipower post.
Two confrontations which, unlike most other blogging and feminist dustups online, got no official post on Pandagon. Amanda posted about the LJ open source boob project - but not brownfemipower.
Amanda did confront it in comments sections in several places - but that’s not the same. In the hierarchy of blogs, an official post is genuine acknowledgment - keeping it in the comments seems evasive.
I know unfair accusations were involved and being a target is an unpleasant defensive situation which makes it very hard to say the right thing. But Amanda only addressed on the false arguments and denied there was a real larger problem.
Even just in terms of blog dynamics, this seems unwise - if you have a group of allies who are mad and feel excluded and rumors are involved, then include them in a post while at the same time debunking the rumors. Of course, it’s easy to see this when it’s not your authority being challenged, but that’s supposed to be the blogging left’s virtue - not just ignoring things in hopes they go away.
And with this prelude of Seal and Amanda trying to deny they had a problem - having to make apologies now looks far worse. Especially since this didn’t happen in a vacuum - Amanda and Seal already had to change the cover after criticism. It is reasonable to ask why no-one noticed the black people in those pictures and remembered the discussion which had just occurred. This wasn’t an impulsive blog post - it’s a book. Then, after the recent flamewars emphasized the issue once again, why not notice?
More importantly, why not make an apology which acknowledges the greater context. This is like someone sitting in a car wreck holding a whiskey bottle and apologizing for poor steering.
It’s time to put it all on the table - in fact, as I’m sure any seasoned blogger will say - in situations like this, putting it all on the table gives you some control over it.
Hell, even that open source boob guy managed to recognize and apologize for the entire dynamic in a short amount of time. It would really help if Amanda did the same. To apologize and say nothing more will seem like stonewalling.
BTW, we’re also huge Jonny Quest fans here too and whenever I find either videos or DVDs of any JQ or similar era cartoons, I scoop ‘em up! Big Lots and Dollar Tree type stores usually have them…
This explosion is a good time for me to reflect on my own thoughtlessness caused by my white privilege. If I can point a finger at anyone, I want to point it at the Obama haters I have run across who believe in
1. Obama’s guilt by association with
2. A pastor who’s felt the white man’s foot for generations
3. Who occasionally pointed out the failings of white people.
4. Which wakeup calls they declare to be racist.
5. As they declare any afrocentrism to be racist.
6. And the pastor’s daughter’s honoring of Minister Farrakhan for helping black people better themselves means Obama is not only racist but anti-Semitic, because of a couple of remarks Farrakhan once made about Judaism.
The reporters dance endlessly around the issue, but make all sorts of assumptions that tell us precious little about why race matters to voters, choosing to focus on whether they do. Willingness to look at the former is the key to making progress.
This is absolutely critical and I had not identified it before I saw this analysis. Now I am on the lookout for the next mainstream news article I see that does this, so I can write a letter to the editor and point it out. (IME, newspapers are much more likely to publish a letter if there is a “hook” to a recent story they published.)
I am also wondering if the blog Press Think could do anything with this. The author of that blog focuses on a critique of the press. I would like to see Pam’s analysis lifted up and made mainstream.
We ALL, and I mean ALL of us have a huge blind spot when it comes to traditional pop culture. We’ll ignore blatant racisim/sexism/classism whatever in that sort of thing because it’s already passed by the filter. That’s what happened in this case I believe…this sort of image, because it’s retro is a “product of a different time”, and thus goes through the fast-lane past the insensitivity checkpoint.
Of course, when it does happen, and unfortunately, we need to be better, of course…you need to apologize and make amends. But that said, it’s something we all do in one form or another.
too many people really don’t have the tools in their emotional toolboxes to 1) call out something they feel is a color aroused bomb
Yes. I think this is critical because people almost have to see that modeled before they know how to do it themselves. It’s hugely powerful to see someone narrate their thoughts on this. I’ve been in meetings where a former boss defused this so elegantly it was almost poetic. His particular focus was on people with mental illness, and avoiding stigma, but he was pretty darn good on racial issues too. “Of course, we’d want to use different imagery here, because the last thing we want is for our conference attendees to see an image that implies that all our panelists are older white guys….”
…and in a fairly liberal office, that meant that the whole rest of the meeting could nod and agree and go right on to brainstorm how to get photos that conveyed what we want, under the pretext that of course they had seen that monochrome problem too. It doesn’t matter whether they had or not — having my ex-boss say it in this calm, everybody’s-already-on-the-same-page, of-course-this-is-important-enough-to-bother-about way meant that we could move right on to discussing it, without having to have a fight about whether it was “really” important to have images of non-white people in the conference brochure.
It’s so immensely important for people who see this stuff to raise it, because that’s part of helping other people train themselves to notice it too. Two more examples: An African-American female colleague, working for months with a community group planning a mural to demonstrate cross-ethnic pride (in this case, African immigrants and African-Americans). Midway through the planning the artists show her a mockup. Four identifiable public figures loom above the rest of the mural. ALL MEN. It wasn’t deliberate maliciousness, it was plain blind privilege. They’re all men. They just didn’t notice that there weren’t any women in their mural design.
Second example: Young Chinese immigrant teacher tries an experiment to get his ESL class to talk more. Introduces a game called “Mafia,” all about criminals and police. As an immigrant, he has no community context to understand that he is doing this in a longtime Italian neighborhood, where (despite the Hollywoodization of “mafia” as synomym for “criminal gang” rather than an ethnic stereotype/slur) the inhabitants have a long and very painful history of facing anti-Italian discrimination.
Thanks so much for this post, Pam. It helps so much to spell this stuff out and be explicit. We can’t fix it unless we talk about it.
That is the main reason I’ve steered clear of saying anything on any of the various discussions of this incident. Clearly Amanda and Seal fucked up. Equally clearly (to me) they suffered from blindness, not malice. As a white woman, though, I’m not the one offended so it’s not my call as to what an appropriate response is.
I respect your impulse to defer here, but I agree with BitchPhD — it’s misplaced.
It’s okay for those of us who aren’t slimed by a particular piece of bigotry to speak up against it. It’s more than okay. It’s necessary. We shouldn’t drown out the voices of the people who are slimed, and we should be mindful of the possibility that we don’t have anything productive to say, but the end goal is to be participating in the conversation.
This goes back to the fact that no community is homogenous, too. As a white man, I can’t simply defer to the black perspective on racism, or to the female perspective on sexism, because there’s no unified black or female perspective to defer to.
If I’m committed to anti-racism and anti-sexism, I need to be actively working against racism and sexism. And I can’t lend my voice to the fight unless I find my voice first.
You learn by listening, but you also learn by talking, and by doing. When to do which is something you have to learn too, and learning is going to involve screwing up. With luck and humility it’s not going to involve a lot of screwing up, but it’s going to involve screwing up. In public. In situations in which it’s important not to screw up.
If you don’t have anything to add to a discussion, it’s absolutely okay to keep quiet. But don’t keep quiet because you’re a white woman. Don’t think that your race renders you incapable of making judgments on this stuff.
Pam, it’s probably better that you missed some of this–I haven’t gotten anything done at work this week. Every time I turn around there’s another thread with 200+ comments, many of which are extremely thought-provoking.
Thanks for adding some context and advice.
Some bloggers are so detached while throwing all sort of frame, flimsy social theory, clever pop psychology, then mixing it all up into lousy analysis on a blog post.
Completely missing the point how there are real people being attack using all those terminology and theory.
Amazing. It’s like sophomore social class homework gone amok. The reason I have such big disdain with social science.
One of the things I’ve admired about both Amanda and Pam has been your strength in the face of adversity, and your ability to keep on persevering when many (most) people would have thrown up their hands and withdrawn from the public sphere.
Pam’s approach tends (from what I’ve seen) to be less confrontational. She seems to take a lot of things in stride, not because she thinks they are okay, but because she takes a long term view. The problems of racism, sexism, and bigotry against LGBT people will not solved overnight. But Pam is very strong. She must be to be able to withstand the challenges placed before her.
Amanda tends to react with a forceful defense, a take-no-prisoners attitude, and a strong effort toward self-preservation. She stands for things - she doesn’t blow with the wind. She believes things, she doesn’t just mouth sentiments that are politically expedient. These are admirable traits in many circumstances. Most of the time these are her strengths, sometimes they are her weakness. Given the challenges Amanda has faced during the last couple years, that inner strength was probably the only thing that kept her going.
I’m sure Amanda will take these lemons and make some excellent lemonade from them. I’m also sure she’s learned some very valuable things, as have many of us on the sidelines. There are many privileges, and society is saturated with them to the point that it’s all too easy to overlook them.
Watching from the sidelines these last couple weeks has been very difficult and painful, and I’m sure many others feel the same way. Some incredibly vile accusations have been thrown about, often (it seems) carelessly. I hope the damage done will not be permanent.
As I am a while male, take these words for what they are worth…
You learn by listening, but you also learn by talking, and by doing. When to do which is something you have to learn too, and learning is going to involve screwing up. With luck and humility it’s not going to involve a lot of screwing up, but it’s going to involve screwing up. In public. In situations in which it’s important not to screw up.
Brooklynite, I wanted to tell you this yesterday, but I didn’t get a chance to.
I think this is an AMAZING point.
A lot of people here seem to be saying something that amounts to “All white people who allow racism to happen should be crucified!!1eleven!1!!” That’s what all this “apologizing isn’t good enough” stuff sounds like, to me. Though of course I agree that apology means nothing unless there is a concerted effort to learn from the mistake and change one’s future behavior. But it’s not as if Amanda said “OK, well, sorry about that — the images are going to be changed in the next printing to advertising ephemera from Coon’s Chicken!”
The point, for me, is that it is important to soldier on once a mistake has been made. Own up to it. Learn from it. Keep moving. It’s kind of like what they tell you after a bad accident — don’t let this scare you away from ever getting behind the wheel again.
The biggest tragedy in all this is the number of feminist voices that have been lost. Brownfemipower is gone, which is sad because I hadn’t gotten around to reading her much before all this. A lot of people seemed to be clamoring for Amanda to lie down on her sword, too.
We need more diverse voices with different levels of privilege and awareness of privilege, not fewer. I don’t think any of us, white, black, brown, purple, whatever, could pass the sort of baroque goal-shifting litmus test that tends to be the favorite cooking method for feminist cannibalism.
I think this situation should serve as a wake-up call for members of the third wave who have often patted themselves on the back for bringing an “intersectional” analysis to their work. For an example, I recommend reading the recent article Valenti wrote in response to the open letter from second wave feminists regarding the democratic presidential nomination (made the rounds in the blogosphere, published in The Nation). My colleagues and I were stunned (and, no, we aren’t members of the second wave) that she could essentially claim that third wavers are responsible for “intersectionality” in contrast to the second wave’s racism etc. Talk about racism and white privilege! Only a member of the dominant group could completely ignore the incredible work women of color have done over the years in challenging the white solipsism of the women’s movement. If the Combahee River Collective and texts such as This Bridge Called My Back, Making Face, Making Soul, Making Waves, Home Girls, among others didn’t put forth an “intersectional” analysis (although there work was more attuned to systemic analysis than today’s work) I don’t know what did . . .one only needs to read Lorde’s “Open Letter to Mary Daly” to realize this latest dust-up isn’t new. Nor is the apology or the retreat to “ironic” humor. If people are serious about interrogating racism (not to mention classism) in feminism, don’t forget history. Quit writing women of color out of feminism.
AH, this site is driving me crazy today. The above mentioned passage from “redmountain” is actually from me “darkchocolate.” I’m at a friend’s house and forgot to change the setting. My bad.
Thanks for the kind words, opoponax. You may not be quite so effusive in a minute, though.
For starters, when I say that learning to be anti-racist and anti-sexist is likely to involve screwing up in public, I don’t mean that folks who screw up should get a pass for it. I mean that screwing up and taking your lumps for screwing up is part of the process. If you screw up, you apologize, of course, but you also have to accept that your apology may not be enough. You need to recognize that your screwups have real consequences, and that people have every right to be angry when you screw up, even if you went in with the best of intentions.
Also, I don’t buy the “goal-shifting” argument, for a couple of reasons. First, it assumes that folks who bring criticisms of a person in the public eye are homogenous, and then attacks them for not being homogenous. It’s only moving the goalposts if a single individual inappropriately reframes his or her complaints midstream, and I haven’t seen much, if any, of that here.
What I have seen is a lot of “first you people said Amanda did X, and when she proved that she hadn’t done X you said she did Y. When she proved she hadn’t done Y, you said she’d done Z.” But when I go back and look at the early threads, I see people making arguments about X and Y and Z from the beginning, and I see a lot less of X, which is held up as the “original” complaint, than is claimed. If one group of people claim X, and another group claim Y, and another group claim Z, and the second and third groups keep complaining after X is refuted, nobody’s moved any goalposts.
Second, Jill hit the nail on the head last night when she said that there’s a difference between shifting goalposts and “ongoing, evolving work and … discussions [that] are not going to have easy ends.” This isn’t a negotiation. It’s never been a negotiation. It’s never been about setting terms and pressuring Amanda (or anyone else) to agree to them.
When folks have asked Amanda to take one action or another, it hasn’t been motivated by a desire to win concessions, it’s been motivated by a desire to begin to fix the damage that folks think she’s done. Getting Amanda to link to WOC bloggers or pull the ape book cover or apologize for the racist illustrations was rarely anyone’s goal, except in the sense that those actions were seen as necessary preconditions for all the other work that needed to be done.
And again. If one person says, “get rid of the illustrations, and I’ll be satisfied,” and Amanda gets Seal to scrap the illustrations, and then someone else says “I’m not satisfied,” that’s not shifting goalposts. And once again, it can only be described as goalpost-shifting if you start from the premise that Amanda’s critics are monolithic, a premise which is deeply problematic for a whole bunch of reasons.
One more thing, while I’m up.
A close cousin of the “shifting goalposts” complaint is “you can’t satisfy these people, so why even try?” There are three problems with that, from where I sit.
First, as I said in my last comment, “these people” aren’t monolithic. No, you probably can’t please everybody. But the fact that there are still people complaining doesn’t remotely mean that you haven’t pleased anybody.
Second, some things can’t be fixed all the way. That doesn’t mean they can’t be fixed part of the way, or that there’s nothing to be gained by trying to fix them as much as you can. And even if folks are still complaining after you’ve fixed them as much as you can, it’s still good that you’ve done the work of fixing that you were able to do. Even if you don’t get a cookie.
Third, you don’t want to please everybody, even if you can. Some criticisms are illegitimate. Some people are assholes. Some people shouldn’t be pleased, because they are pleased by bad things. But in my experience, such people are few and far between, and they gain most of their prominence when the people they’re criticizing hold them up as representative of their critics. It’s not appropriate to exalt your most assholish antagonists in order to avoid engaging with everyone else.
Fourth, even assholes sometimes have a point. Just because someone’s being a jerk, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong on substance. Just because someone continues to yell at me after I’ve done everything I can to address their complaints, it doesn’t mean their complaints were made disingenuously. And just because a complaint is made disingenuously, it doesn’t mean I get to blow it off.
This isn’t about winning. It isn’t about scoring points. It’s about trying to figure out what the right thing to do is, and trying to find the strength and the ability to do it. People are being jerks? Let them be jerks. Don’t let your anger at their jerkiness distract you from your own obligations. Don’t think for a second that their jerkiness gives you license to be a jerk.
And don’t neglect the possibility that they’ve been righteous all along, and that their righteous anger just looks like jerkiness because it’s directed at you. Don’t assume that they’re right, but don’t dismiss the possibility out of hand, either.
MORE PIE … !
(I need something with sugar)
I don’t mean that folks who screw up should get a pass for it. I mean that screwing up and taking your lumps for screwing up is part of the process. If you screw up, you apologize, of course, but you also have to accept that your apology may not be enough. You need to recognize that your screwups have real consequences, and that people have every right to be angry when you screw up, even if you went in with the best of intentions.
I agree 100%.
Of course, it seems to me like certain people think that the penalty for this f*ckup should be that Amanda has to quit her blog, or pull her book out of publication, or commit seppuku, or something. All of which are unfair and unrealistic. This particular line of reasoning, “your apology is not enough!!!!!!!!!!” reminds me of the Chinese ‘Cultural Revolution’, when lives were ruined because you wore a certain color, or read a certain book, or said something stupid.
Of course Amanda will suffer the consequences. How can she do otherwise? She is not a magician who can alter the fabric of reality and make this go away. She doesn’t seem to know any Jedi mind tricks. Some people might stop reading her blog, or decide not to buy the book (especially considering it can be hard to tell which printing you’re getting if you order through Amazon, which will be the only way to get the book for a lot of folks). This will probably tarnish her reputation in certain circles for a long time to come. It will at least be a monkey on her back which she’ll have to continue to address, in the mirror if nowhere else.
For next April fool prank. Pandagon needs to do something spectacular.
Maybe announcing that feminism has merged with FLDS and opening a compound in Texas, selling book service and stone quarry.
And don’t neglect the possibility that they’ve been righteous all along, and that their righteous anger just looks like jerkiness because it’s directed at you.
Exactly.
Oh, and regarding ’shifting goalposts’ — I don’t have a dog at all in the other recent Amanda controversy. I don’t read Alternet, am not terribly familiar with Brownfemipower, and heard about the whole thing way too late to have an informed opinion about it.
My mention of goal-post shifting has more to do with the overall history of this sort of thing within feminism, as well as things I went through back when I was involved in feminist activism (which I quit over similar Feminist Perfection Litmus Test bullshit). When you really, really want to throw your feminist opponent into a pot of boiling water, you do not stop when your first criticism is shot down. You keep looking for material until you find something that sticks. It doesn’t matter whether any of your material hangs together at all, or whether it is appropriate or meaningful in any way. If you can’t get her on intellectual dishonesty, try racism. Shit, you could even call her out for wearing heels, skirts, and makeup, or shaving her legs. If all else fails, try things that are completely outside her control - Kate Millet was ripped to shreds for being a lesbian, and Gloria Steinem went down because she had attended a proto-socialist summer camp that, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, was infiltrated by the CIA.
This happens over and over within feminism, both publicly and on an individual level. It is not unique to Feministe vs. Pandagon.
As usual, MikeEss has been stealing my brainwaves. (I really need to get myself that tinfoil hat.)
Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, Amanda’s gotta pop off and say stupid things she later regrets when she feels like she’s being attacked. In previous situations that resembled this one, she has always come back and addressed the original situation, even when it was the Duke rape case. Always.
So the benefit of the doubt that I’m giving her is that she’s going to come back and discuss the whole Brownfemipower aspect when she’s had some time to cool down and think about it, because she has done that before.
But, then, I’m also in the minority here because I think the illustrations and the BFP flaps are separate. They touch on some similar issues, but not closely enough to try and claim that they’re related except in the sense that they happened around the same time. So, no, she should not try to issue one statement that addresses both, because they’re separate issues.
I would like to see some dialog on the *other* problem with the cover and other illustrations - they are very sexist. Barbie in a leotard in a swamp - give me a break! I’m sure the intention was ironical, but it also strongly appears a ploy to sell more books (which is the purpose of a book cover, after all), and perhaps to defang the scary word “feminist” in the subtitle. One could have easily made the same point - used the same type of illustration - w/out the Barbie element.
This is the natural end point of do-me feminism, chick feminism, girl-feminism, whatever you call it: internalized oppression. Forget white privilege - the cover and illustrations should have been unacceptable from a purely feminist standpoint. I speculate that Amanda and Seal, blinded by the possibility of a best seller thanks to Amanda’s prominence, and their critical faculties perhaps impaired by the do-me feminism crap, were blinded to the blatantly sexist nature of the illustrations. And if they couldn’t see the sexism, then the racism didn’t stand a chance.
I have seen almost no discussion of the sexist content of the illustrations, and find that puzzling.
bad Jim @ 19: s there any group of easily caricatured men whose depiction wouldn’t get up anyone’s nose?
Klingons. Raiding Vikings. Daleks. Maybe the Spanish Inquisition.
Nazis have been suggested somewhere.
it also strongly appears a ploy to sell more books (which is the purpose of a book cover, after all), and perhaps to defang the scary word “feminist” in the subtitle.
Oh, come on!
I don’t really understand how anyone who knows anything about Seal press, has seen or read any other book about feminism before, knows anything about Amanda, and/or has ever read this blog or skimmed Teh Book could think that.
As I’ve already said, I think the Jungle Girl angle is LAME, on a lot of levels, one of which is the nubile barbie imagery.
But the idea that Seal Press, a specifically feminist publisher which has a long history of putting out far more controversial books than this, wanted to dumb down or obscure the feminist content of the book? UR DOIN IT RONG.
The idea that Amanda’s work was chosen with the intent of putting out yet another of those silly “feminism lite!” titles? UR DOIN IT RONG.
The sorts of publishers that pearl-clutch over ohnoes someone might think this book is about feminism! are not Seal Press. That is more in the league of the big major presses, which rarely put out books on feminism these days, anyhow.
The sorts of writers hired to do those kinds of books, when they are published (much easier to just not publish books about feminism than to actually spend money putting out a fake feminist title), tend to come from the ranks of women’s magazine writers. You can always tell when a book has been mis-shelved in the Women’s Studies section when the writer’s bio mentions she’s an editor at Marie Claire or Teen Vogue. Not something that describes Amanda, as far as I know.
Of course, I think it’s possible that Perseus is putting pressure on Seal to lighten up, and there are aspects of this book design fiasco that imply that it might be some kind of sabotage. But of course I know too much about this sort of thing to assume that right off the bat.
Anyhoo, I’m off on a wine-glass-buying excursion with the roommate…
“Klingons.”
All version of Klingons, both from TOS and all of the more recent shows and movies are just too suggestive to work. Too brown, too “uncivilized”. And a slight against aliens besides…
“Raiding Vikings.”
Slight against those of Norwegian extraction…
“Daleks.”
Are there “male” and/or “female” Daleks? Besides, it’s a slight against bio-robotic creatures…
“Maybe the Spanish Inquisition.”
Obviously anti-Catholic, and too European. A slight (by proxy) against all believers…
Keep it up. I’m sure we can find fault with any image/idea it’s possible to come up with…
Fourth, even assholes sometimes have a point. Just because someone’s being a jerk, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong on substance.
And from my vantage point, it’s the assholery (whether there is a legitimate point or not) that terminates rational dialogue. People who might contribute — and add a new perspective to the conversation withdraw and leave. Then everyone loses.
I can’t stand watching things spin out of control, and ultimately off point. There seems to be more emphasis on ego, saving face, lobbing bombs and one-upping each other to exact satisifactory punishment as a relevant point is made.
That to me, is how we enable both honest mistakes and malicious color-arousal to continue — the room is left full of the angry, mostly anonymous commenters who are content to continue flaming behind the safety of a computer screen.
That’s true on so many topics, but when it comes to race and gender we owe it to ourselves, given the two people running for the Dem nomination for prez, for Christ’s sake, to figure out how to discuss this better than we do over your average political BS.
I think, particularly in the MSM and the blogosphere, that too many people find solace in an academic approach that completely avoids analysis of the very real emotions, misconceptions and poor communication approaches that drive biases. While it’s more comfortable to deal with polls and statistics, we all know the key to moving forward is dealing with the human element — and that is infinitely more difficult to deal with.
I’ve been thinking about this business of assholery since I posted, Pam. What you’ve just written reminds me that what I said above was advice on how to respond when (you think) people are being assholes, rather than advice about how not to be an asshole yourself. (The latter comes up, but only indirectly — don’t respond to assholes by becoming one is pretty much my advice.)
Chris Clarke put up a post yesterday over at his place on whether a humane online politics is possible. I think that if a single person being an asshole can derail any conversation, the answer is going to wind up being no, because there are always going to be assholes. (Even if you moderate, you wind up dealing with them in one way or another.)
I can’t stop someone from being an asshole. If “assholery terminates rational dialogue,” as you say, it’s going to be really hard to keep rational dialogue going.
I guess I am more optimistic, though, about looking for ways to work around the assholes. “Don’t feed the troll” may be the most important four words ever uttered in the history of internet communities, and the more success we have in finding extensions and corollaries of that principle, I suspect, the better off we’ll be.
We’re always going to have assholes among us. But I think a crucial part of dealing with the human element in our politics is figuring out how we can keep ourselves from becoming assholes when we’re confronted with them, and how we can disarm their assholery instead of giving in to it by letting them dominate the discourse.
Things our mothers taught us:
Be considerate of other people’s feelings.
If you’ve done something wrong, apologize to the wronged one and try to rectify your mistake. The other person may or may not respond, but you’ve done the right thing.
No-one knows everything.
Try not to make the same mistake twice.
Not bad guidelines for blog dustups, or discussions around race, or anything else.
On a lighter note, “bad Jim @ 19: is there any group of easily caricatured men whose depiction wouldn’t get up anyone’s nose?
Klingons. ” - ’scuse me?? Some of us think Klingons (newer shows) are hawt, at least if you are in the mood for some serious wrestling.
I daresay that one could put any number of puffy paleface preachers and politicians in the badguy spot. I am not anti-Christian, merely anti-jackass.
Agreed, NancyP- I may be hetero, but this one was by far the hawtest…
Dammit, that was supposed to a link. (need to practice more)
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/K’Ehleyr
Okay; there she is…
Bleah. That didn’t work either. Chucking in my chips, gonna shut up and learn from Pam et al today…
Clearly some people choose to remain blind to their biases, others choose to do something about it.
You know what would be really cool and hip and dare I say progressive?
If the cool hip progressive white people, who understand that ‘racist’ is a really bad and nasty thing to be, would try responding with curiosity rather than panic to the suggestion, That was racist.
Some specific replies that have worked for me* include: What makes you say that? and Why do you think so?
This allows me to take another party’s view (please note that the other party is not always a POC and it is not my obligation as a white person to substitute a POC’s perspective for my own, any more than it is her job to ’splain me what’s racist) and evaluate it.
Usually my end of the conversation goes, Oh yeah, you know, I didn’t think of that. Damn water, the fish don’t perceive it well! Sorry you had to see that. What do you think I might do about it?
And if that gets me what it’s gotten Amanda in this shitstorm, which is ‘Seppuku would be the minimum’, then I know I’m dealing with a person who doesn’t share my priorities.
Because expressing racial dominance by not noticing stuff that is racist is like a fart. Everyone does it sometimes, some stink more than others, and the best thing to do is own up to it and open a window.
It’s sad and depressing that we don’t have a vocabulary to tell someone, Hey, that looks racist to me, without indicting their morality, brains and judgment.
If I could magically evaporate one barrier to productive dialogue about race, it would be to make up a word that white people you’d want to talk to feel less defensive about than ‘racist’.
Then anyone of any color could say, Dude, you sprelched back there—why did you assume that______________? And the person who sprelched could say, Oh shit, you think anyone saw me?
That’s what I want. And a pretty pony.
*’Worked’ means ‘made me less likely to sprelch in the future’, not ‘made me feel cool and hip and progressive’. It helps a lot to be the spawn of ignorant racist hillbillies, because I have a high degree of confidence that I can identify intentional acts of racism.
I am outraged about something, right now,..
I don’t know what.
I want my free donuts and an apology.
That’s why I exchanged “racist” for “color-aroused.” Hat tip to Francis L. Holland.
I agree that the word racist has ceased to have any use other than as a trigger for a defensive reaction regardless of whether something is offensive intentionally vs. malice, or out of ignorance vs. purposeful.
That’s really good.
I like ‘color-aroused’. I also like Cornel West’s formulation, ‘racial thinking’. He used it as a descriptive effectively in essays published early in the 90s.
The book ‘Race Matters’ is largely about his notion that the belief that race exists and has import is a form of shared mental illness, and that therefore we can afford to treat intentional acts of racism as we would symptoms of any other subclinical but common emotional disturbance.
Those who suffer from moderate to severe symptoms of racial thinking are quick to color-arousal.
That could work….
PhoenixRising April 26, 2008 at 1:27 pm
This allows me to take another party’s view (please note that the other party is not always a POC and it is not my obligation as a white person to substitute a POC’s perspective for my own, any more than it is her job to ’splain me what’s racist) and evaluate it.
I tend to get annoyed with racial categorization, because it instantly generates stereotypes, some sort of racial role/frame that everybody in it has to play.
for eg. It’s not that useful running around saying “white people this, white people that”, (who exactly is ‘white people, how do they behave?) See how unproductive the questions generated from the “white” term?
you already see in discussion. (gotta be oppressor, do the self flagellation, … and all sort of weird psychoanalysis, and frame)
It reduce a person into simplistic caricature using social theory.
Now imagine the terminology “POC”, people of color. WTF is that suppose to be?
What I am trying to say, chill with the clever social theory and terminologies. It distorts and reduce a group of people into caricature. Abstracting out actual person, people you meet in daily life into mere words. It dehumanizes.
It is useful if you are an elementary student trying to learn the world quickly with simplistic definitions. But pretty fubar mental map for a grown up. As if one can reduce complex interaction within crisp variables. An entry in a manual “How to interact with a “POC” and “WOC” for a white person.”.
It’s lazy approach to interaction. When somebody doesn’t fit description, heads are exploding. … well duh?
How about just go out and actually talk instead of so busy pushing bunch of high horse social theory. The world is a pretty interesting place to explore when people are not all the same or saying the same things all the time.
Just keep it on ground level already.
If you read through all these threads, you see a lot of people bending over backwards to justify assholery. It’s something nobody wants taken away from them. The justification is always some variation on “I’m right, you’re wrong, therefore I don’t have to ‘cater to your feelings.’”
The ideological purity and manichean worldview is really out of control sometimes. I think I remember you saying you read Glenn’s book about how a manichean worldview can be used to justify anything. That’s what I see here. We’re the good guys and you’re the bad guys so we can do whatever we want. (On both “sides”)
Most people can’t point this out.
It gets thrown back as “don’t tell us to watch our tone” or “don’t tell us to pipe down.” (And no, I’m not talking about “women of color” specifically here)
The internet is full of destructive personalities, and the feminist blogosphere is not immune from that. But it’s really really difficult to say that.
Maybe I don’t have the right tools to do that, or maybe my sex/skin tone makes it impossible, but I don’t see *anybody* who can wade into a thread and say this without it being immediately rejected.
Maybe someone like yourself who has built up a lot of good will and respect could say it? I don’t know. You need the tools to express yourself properly (which I lack) and someone else needs the willingness to listen without assuming the worst.
In most places I visit if I said “there is a lot of ego clashing and bomb throwing here” people would respond “no shit, it’s the internet.”
Squashed, great example of attacking your way to dialogue. I’ll pitch in and beg forgiveness if I’m feeding a troll.
What I am trying to say, chill with the clever social theory and terminologies. It distorts and reduce a group of people into caricature. Abstracting out actual person, people you meet in daily life into mere words. It dehumanizes.
You’re right about that. That was the lazy shorthand way out. Let me express it in more accessible terms, thus permanently offending whoever said it:
The individual who characterized this in terms of, I’m paraphrasing here, Pam didn’t mention this so I thought it must be no big deal, is taking a shortcut that I think will be unproductive.
As demonstrated by this post, Pam has responsibilities in the world other than being your radar for racism. Further, if you think your role as a white person in ending racism is to sit around waiting for Pam or someone else who isn’t white to tell you what to react to, you’re not contributing to anything.
So now that I’m “off my clever theories’, as you demanded, I’m just as useless as the next asshole telling white people to quit being entitled and passive about racism.
Does this work? I don’t think so. Calling each other names is a failed strategy.
The horse is dead. Who here wants to get off and walk?
Margalis, good point but I’d like to expand (raise your hand if you’re surprised).
In that this bug you’ve identified, the tendency to throw a bomb, self aggrandize and extract punishment for transgressions real and perceived, is a bug common to all movements. Not just progressives, not just civil rights, and certainly not just on the internet.
My wife describes the blogosphere as ‘the tool you use to annoy more people faster than ever before’. And she’s right. The anonymity brings out the no-accountability assholes, but in board meetings and at volunteer workdays, the putsch for purity is ever present.
I think the inner-tubes might be a place to solve one small part of the lack of progress among progressives, but this pattern is an artifact of ‘the movement’ not the technology.
PhoenixRising April 26, 2008 at 2:49 pm
noo… not your overall assertion, I was thinking more about last big thread. The terminologies and theories thrown around are just ridic. Because those terminologies and theory actually set boundary rather tightly what can and cannot happen in term of role.
maybe I should have used quotation and give it a short title instead. that post does sound like an indictment what you are saying.
of course, it is about people talking it all out. no argument there.
Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, Amanda’s gotta pop off and say stupid things she later regrets when she feels like she’s being attacked. In previous situations that resembled this one, she has always come back and addressed the original situation, even when it was the Duke rape case. Always.
From my perspective as a reader and lurker who doesn’t know Amanda outside of her blog posts and comments, this seems to be a big part of the reason why the discussions get so contentious. By the time she comes back with a calmer reply, she’s already punched a lot of people in the nose (metaphorically speaking). I’m not surprised that a lot of people have already left the discussion at that point with the impression that she isn’t willing to listen to any criticism.
We ALL, and I mean ALL of us have a huge blind spot when it comes to traditional pop culture. We’ll ignore blatant racisim/sexism/classism whatever in that sort of thing because it’s already passed by the filter. That’s what happened in this case I believe…this sort of image, because it’s retro is a “product of a different time”, and thus goes through the fast-lane past the insensitivity checkpoint.
I know this is one of my own blind spots. It’s tempting to assume that we’ve moved so far beyond the biases of 50 years ago that those images have lost their sting. But we haven’t really. I do think that some of the images can be used in a retro/kitsch/ironic way but only in contexts that make it abundantly clear that that is the case.
Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, Amanda’s gotta pop off and say stupid things she later regrets when she feels like she’s being attacked. In previous situations that resembled this one, she has always come back and addressed the original situation, even when it was the Duke rape case. Always.
From my perspective as a reader and lurker who doesn’t know Amanda outside of her blog posts and comments, this seems to be a big part of the reason why the discussions get so contentious. By the time she comes back with a calmer reply, she’s already punched a lot of people in the nose (metaphorically speaking). I’m not surprised that a lot of people have already left the discussion at that point with the impression that she isn’t willing to listen to any criticism.
We ALL, and I mean ALL of us have a huge blind spot when it comes to traditional pop culture. We’ll ignore blatant racisim/sexism/classism whatever in that sort of thing because it’s already passed by the filter. That’s what happened in this case I believe…this sort of image, because it’s retro is a “product of a different time”, and thus goes through the fast-lane past the insensitivity checkpoint.
I know this is one of my own blind spots. It’s tempting to assume that we’ve moved so far beyond the biases of 50 years ago that those images have lost their sting. But we haven’t really. I do think that some of the images can be used in a retro/kitsch/ironic way but only in contexts that make it abundantly clear that that is the case.
Oops, didn’t mean to post twice. Sorry about that.
Ms. Marcotte said:
*sigh*
I’m not a regular poster here, as this has never felt like a safe space for me, but I have to respond to this.
Amanda, I appreciate your apology, and I’m glad that you’ve come to realize how harmful those awful racist images were. I sincerely hope that your eyes have been opened.
Unfortunately, the comment I cite above admits *no* responsibility. Reading it, one would think that you didn’t bob and weave to avoid responsibility for your actions, or that you never tried to hide behind your white privilege.
Fact is, you did. And your apologies and support of Pam would carry more weight if you said instead “it IS often easier for me to ignore these issues and…” etc etc.
It’s called “taking responsibility for one’s actions”. I’ve had opportunity to do it, not being perfect, and you know what? People respect you for it.
Places that were safe spaces for me are gone. I don’t see where you’ve addressed that at all. I don’t see where you show any remorse for what you’ve taken away from people like me. I was a lurker on those blogs. I might check in after dealing with covert racism in RL, and I would sigh and say “okay, I’m not crazy, it really IS happening”. BfP and BlackAmazon gave me strength.
Gone, all gone. Do you have any idea what you’ve taken away from me?
Your commenters in this discussion are showing great courage and strength by having a real discussion about issues of race. Right here, right now. Many of them are owning their privilege and debating what to do about it in support of anti-racism. Some are sharing their own experiences in which they unintentionally inserted foot-in-mouth and the horror they felt as a result (something you don’t have to be White to do, incidentally). I’m glad to see it, and I hope it continues, because this is a discussion we need to have.
But as hopeful as I am, Pandagon will never be the kind of safe space that La Chola was. I was a lurker, and BfP doesn’t know me from Adam, but that doesn’t change what her words meant to me.
I have yet to hear any kind of apology for that, or any admission of responsibility. And until I do…well I hope you’re sincere, but I will reserve judgment.
Peace
yliza
Ms. Marcotte said:
*sigh*
I’m not a regular poster here, as this has never felt like a safe space for me, but I have to respond to this.
Amanda, I appreciate your apology, and I’m glad that you’ve come to realize how harmful those awful racist images were. I sincerely hope that your eyes have been opened.
Unfortunately, the comment I cite above admits *no* responsibility. Reading it, one would think that you didn’t bob and weave to avoid responsibility for your actions, or that you never tried to hide behind your white privilege.
Fact is, you did. And your apologies and support of Pam would carry more weight if you said instead “it IS often easier for me to ignore these issues and…” etc etc.
It’s called “taking responsibility for one’s actions”. I’ve had opportunity to do it, not being perfect, and you know what? People respect you for it.
Places that were safe spaces for me are gone. I don’t see where you’ve addressed that at all. I don’t see where you show any remorse for what you’ve taken away from people like me. I was a lurker on those blogs. I might check in after dealing with covert racism in RL, and I would sigh and say “okay, I’m not crazy, it really IS happening”. BfP and BlackAmazon gave me strength.
Gone, all gone. Do you have any idea what you’ve taken away from me?
Your commenters in this discussion are showing great courage and strength by having a real discussion about issues of race. Right here, right now. Many of them are owning their privilege and debating what to do about it in support of anti-racism. Some are sharing their own experiences in which they unintentionally inserted foot-in-mouth and the horror they felt as a result (something you don’t have to be White to do, incidentally). I’m glad to see it, and I hope it continues, because this is a discussion we need to have.
But as hopeful as I am, Pandagon will never be the kind of safe space that La Chola was. I was a lurker, and BfP doesn’t know me from Adam, but that doesn’t change what her words meant to me.
I have yet to hear any kind of apology for that, or any admission of responsibility. And until I do…well I hope you’re sincere, but I will reserve judgment.
Peace
yliza
yikes, sorry for double post. My bad.
yliza
My problem with Amanda’s apology - and I’m not alone - is that while she apologizes for the images, she says nothing about the pattern which led to using those images.
Not only are we as privileged white folks supposed to feel guilt over our allegedly superior social position, but we’re supposed to prove our cred through self-loathing, and by throwing someone else (or ourselves) on every grenade that rolls into the race-relations discussion.
Maybe if we debase ourselves enough, we’ll finally prove to the race mavens that we mean it when we say we’re not intentionally excluding anyone. We grew up with these prejudices. They affect us. We confront them where ever we can. Sometimes we fail. That doesn’t mean our apologies are insincere. It doesn’t mean we want to suppress people of color or members of other minority groups.
That’s a big part of my own problem with this dust-up. Marcotte and Seal apologized. They rectified the situation by removing the offensive images. But that isn’t enough. No. They have to write their apologies in blood and donate all the money they make to a race-related cause, then apologize again, then attend some sort of tolerance boot camp before they’re permitted to reappear in public with the blessing of their moral superiors.
yliza April 26, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Do you expect her to be perfectly graceful under fire, instead of misstep and unsure what to do, when something happens to her year long labor?
I’ll hire her for global conglomerate PR spokesperson if she did, because being able to know perfectly what to say and when under fire is rare and expensive skill. One can only get it through lifelong experience. Never mind first time author.
So, …
Do people focus this much sustained attention against rightwing antifeminism book? or is this reserved only for first time feminism author?
the comment I cite above admits *no* responsibility. Reading it, one would think that you didn’t bob and weave to avoid responsibility for your actions, or that you never tried to hide behind your white privilege.
Whoa, bad faith much?
Granted, I’m a white girl, but the way I read this comment was that Amanda was thanking Pam for frequently reminding her, via her spot-on blog posts, that examining one’s own level of privilege is extremely important. I.E. she would spend a lot more time with her head in the sand about this stuff if it weren’t for Pam diligently hacking away at it on the very blog Amanda also works on, and thus raising Amanda’s consciousness about these things.
In other words, gratitude.
If white people aren’t allowed to thank people of color for helping them understand racism and white privilege better, the what are we allowed to do? Should we just immolate ourselves en masse, or what?
Amanda is one of the most divisive figures on the internet. My husband, who is very feminist and aware, will not read her because he gets too angry too quickly and finds it hard to think logically about what she’s saying.
I know people are going to say, “Too little, too late” when she finally addresses it head-on since it’s been going on for weeks now, but that’s no excuse for not addressing it at all. I look forward to seeing what she has to say about the whole controversy.
Maybe this is apropos of nothing, but the biggest problem I’m having reacting personally to all this is that there seems to be no room for a middle ground. Which is sadly the kind of problem that no one and everyone is responsible for. The reason I was glad Amanda apologized so definitively for the illustrations is that I was worried that cycle would start again like it did in the appropriation controversy. Still, it seems like this is still turning into a new front for that problem.
Here’s the thing I’m struggling with. I think the charges of appropriation were overstated. But, I agree that the response TO those charges was counterproductive. So what is that supposed to mean? How does one respond to that? The last time I tried carving out a middle ground in a progressive cause dust-up, I ended up with both sides seeing me as the “enemy”, so I get why people don’t want to try bridge gaps like this. There lies danger. Which isn’t the fault of people on either side of the issue, but isn’t “not” the fault of them either. And likewise for the middle-ground. Its understandable to not get involved, but is that acceptable?
I don’t know. But the anger on one side keeps increasing, as the defensiveness on the other. So the gap keeps growing wider and also far more dangerous to enter in an effort to resolve things. And everyone’s at fault, yet no one’s to blame. And I mean that. I mean, I get where everyone is coming from and that is frustrating the heck out of me. Everyone is perpetuating the situation, but I don’t see any villain here either. Which is the kind of thing that would make both sides mad because everyone is getting too invested in seeing bad guys.
And I do get that I’m not the first person to talk about finding a middle ground. Its just, its frustrated me that its still found no traction. Which is troubling, because there really needs to be calm mediation, but I’m not sure a mediator won’t just be seen as a tool of the opposition by BOTH sides. Everyone is getting more and more invested in getting everything that anyone not totally for them, must be totally against them. On both sides.
I’ve got nothing constructive either, so I don’t pretend I’m not part of the problem right now. Its just frustrating the heck out of me all together.
I end up feeling funny about picking apart a mistake that’s already happened. But with the first book cover and now this, here’s my analysis AND proposed solution:
1. Amanda does not mean to offend, based on her frequent posts picking apart subtle verbal racism.
2. She is, however, rather blind to visual racism– she sees the picture literally rather than picking up history and symbolism.
3. She therefore needs to request a visual editor who will catch the message she misses and tell her what is wrong before it happens again.
People are getting upset or glossing over #2 on my list of points, often based on their opinion based on their perception of #1. But, really, #2 is partly white privilege which she needs to be aware of, and I believe she tries– but it ALSO involves information processing. All the awareness she can manage might not make her good at analyzing pictures. So she needs help from someone who processes pictorial information well.
Anyone care to volunteer themselves, or recommend people Amanda might approach? I would expect whoever helps should get credit as a visual editor, or some such title.
recommend people Amanda might approach?
Amanda’s not the only one who doesn’t get such things right off. Let’s get more people of color into the publishing business; trying to educate every author may be s Sisyphean task.
Amanda is one of the most divisive figures on the internet. My husband, who is very feminist and aware, will not read her because he gets too angry too quickly and finds it hard to think logically about what she’s saying.
I know people are going to say, “Too little, too late” when she finally addresses it head-on since it’s been going on for weeks now, but that’s no excuse for not addressing it at all. I look forward to seeing what she has to say about the whole controversy.
I think it’s unfortunate she’s so divisive, because I enjoy well-placed snark.
I agree that it is important that she addresses the issues directly. I also hope that she decides to participate in her apology thread, which has a number of her “supporters” going on about how she didn’t need to apologize and the images aren’t actually racist. That fact that Amanda hasn’t commented on what they are saying makes it seem to me like she’s OK with it - and makes the comment thread an unfriendly place for anyone who disagrees. And yes, I know she’s on her book tour and very busy, but she did have time to pop in to the thread to make a comment unrelated to that issue, and to make a post about irritating bluetooth earpiece users, which gives me the impression that she’s not particularly interested in fostering constructive discussion based on her post.
Not only are we as privileged white folks supposed to feel guilt over our allegedly superior social position, but we’re supposed to prove our cred through self-loathing, and by throwing someone else (or ourselves) on every grenade that rolls into the race-relations discussion.
The Devil’s Advocate, I’m not getting that message at all. I don’t see most people asking Amanda or other white feminists to display self-loathing or guilt. The request seems to me to be that those of us who are white should make the effort to reflect on the fact that being white does put us in a position of privilege and how the privileged point of view can make us overlook non-white voices, and how it can give us the luxury of ignoring racist images and texts. Even if that is done out of ignorance rather than malice, it’s hurtful. And at least part of the solution is that we should try and be more inclusive and more aware of the racist messages we often overlook. That’s not suicide, that’s growth.
My point was