More fail, with blood pressure warnings.

[glass_icarus]

Oops! I thought I'd poke my head in to see if any productive conversations were being had on the RaceFail front, and instead I ran face-first into this. (First-alert credit, for me, at least, goes to luzdeestrellas.) Here's a few glimpses, with my Fail-o-meter in bolded text.

Strike one: Dismissal.

People imprint on what they know as they grow up. They can work to change that imprint, or to alter it. But growing up white in the U.S. isn't an automatic ticket to being racist.

What sets me off every time is the pity whine "You don't know what it's like to grow up (insert ethnicity here). You're white, so you don't understand my paiiiinnnnnnnn!" Yeah, whatever. Until you can understand

[airing out of laundry here, which I would empathize rather more with if not for the rest of the post]

I don't want to hear about how you've been prejudiced against all your life.

Strike two: Resentment and Dismissal (or, since when was Toni Morrison top of the "pretentious" list?).

When I was in graduate school, I took an African-American lit course. I didn't make it past the second book that we had to read, not because of the topic of the class, but because I'd bitten off more than I could chew, and the other two classes were required. The two books I did read were Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man and Beloved by Toni Morrison. I loved the first and hated the second. Why? STORY. Ellison's book had so many shamanistic elements in it that fascinated me to no end, told in easy-to-understand prose. I loved the book. Very Taoist. Morrison's book...oy, the pain. The first 36 pages made absolutely no sense. The prose was beyond thick; it was incomprehensible. I kept reading, and fortunately the book got easier to understand from there, but by that time, I was completely turned off by the pretentiousness. What should have been a fascinating ghost story with powerful undercurrents in African-American culture became something that I rejected. Morrison talked down to me in that book, at a scholarly level. I won't read her again. I don't even care if Song of Soloman is a much better book. In Beloved, she did not respect the reader, or at least this reader. I have no time for authors who are like that.

Strike three: Not Listening and "Reverse Racism."

Straight to that stupid meme that some people feel they should post in the fall-out of RaceFail '09. I'm not going to dignify its text with a copy here. Sufficient to say, I think the post itself is bigotry. I'm not going to turn into a Pharisee, sit in the temple, and wail that I've been bad, look how bad I am, look at how evil I am, and look at me trying to be good again. Excuse me, but no.

I've been studying and working my ass off to understand cultures, and one of the things I've learned is that prejudice is prejudice. If it isn't the color of your skin, it's your accent, it's your hair, it's your social status, it's the actions of the past or the suspicion of future actions. Every culture has its prejudice, and while it's a good struggle for each individual, to mea culpa in this manner is to hand power over to those who would make you feel guilty to give themselves power. It's not a sane or safe transfer of power. No matter the wording, this meme is being used as a big stick to keep any one of a number of categories down, and I refuse to participate.

I am not beholden to anyone or anything except my conscious in the matters of prejudice. My ethics and my morals are my guidelines, and while I will not claim to be perfect, I will claim that I'm already doing my damnest. Anyone who demands proof will never be satisfied with that proof. Nothing that I can say or do, up to and including posting that ludicrous meme, will be accepted beyond a begrudging "at least she's trying." That response is vile beyond belief, and I refuse to drown in it.

Well, hey now. Your life is your business, and we've all damn well got our own baggage to deal with. That's something we have to work through on our own, and I'm certainly not looking for tea and cookies from you. But what you just did right there is what I call White Privilege, because you're trying to invalidate my baggage as an internet meme. You're speaking your piece and, you being white, everyone on the whole damn internet is hearing you talk, but when I and other PoCs and allies are telling our stories, not everyone on the whole damn internet is hearing us. And when you lock the comments to that post after people call you on what you're saying, that's called silencing, and not listening. And for the record, it's most definitely not trying.

And that's what I wanted to say, since my original response* was really quite intemperate and not phrased in a constructive manner. But hey, in the interests of fair play, I'll put up my comments, too, even though they're screened at the moment and you probably won't deign to reply anyway.

ETA of some importance: I don't know if it's better or worse that you posted that as a "research study", but... I'm done wasting words about it, since other people have expressed exactly what they, and I, think about that.

*cut for edited-down-prior-to-posting-there mini-rant:
1. Congratulations! I am a person of color. How Privileged of you to categorize this latest conversation about our hundreds of years of institutionalized pain as a "meme." I don't care how anti-racist you think you are- if nothing else, that right there? That was racist. If your reaction to people like me saying "Hey, watch it, you're hurting me and that's not cool" is "WELL WHATEVER BECAUSE LOOK AT MY PAIN OVER HERE," that tells me that you are not only failing, but also not trying, and what do you know? That's also racist. You know why? Our pain is not and will never be the same, but if a white friend of yours had said something to you about her problems, you'd be listening instead of plugging your ears.

2. I realize that you are probably not going to unscreen my previous comment, let alone reply, but the bit about listening- I'm sure you don't care about the rest- is something I would like to point out to you, in the hope that maybe a few years down the line, you'll pull it out as something to think about.

Comments

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

The most basic facts are - Emmett Till was an African-American, fourteen year old boy who went to visit relatives in Mississippi during the summer of 1955. While in a grocery store in the small town close to where his relatives lived, he interacted with a white woman - some reports say he whistled at her, some say he merely said "bye, baby" as they left the store; things are still, to this day, muddled.

What is not muddled is what happened next - Emmett was murdered by four adult, local white men who gouged out his eye, beat him, shot him, and threw him into the river attached to the fan from a cotton gin. His body was found three days later. His mother insisted on an open casket funeral so that Americans would have to confront what society had permitted, even encouraged.

There are photos of his body in that casket, but I would urge caution before googling for them. They are profoundly disturbing, and could for many, many people be triggering.

The wikipedia page on Emmett Till is well written and has numerous great links to further reading - it does contain the photo of the open casket, however, so again, beware triggering.

[glass-icarus.livejournal.com]

.............. Wow. And here I was thinking she couldn't possibly have made me more speechless. Wrong again, it seems!

[sheafrotherdon.livejournal.com]

She is staggering in her faildom.

[delux-vivens.livejournal.com]

There's also the part where the men who did it confessed in a magazine interview and... not much happened.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/sfeature/sf_look.html