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piranhaso apparently there was a panel at wiscon about cultural appropriation, which has set off a firestorm of LJ commentary, which has transmogrified into various posts on my flist talking about privilege and racism (as well as feminism thrown in because the subject wasn't complex enough i guess :). i've been working my way backwards, and the actual cultural appropriation discussions are quite interesting, and i'll probably read more of them tomorrow. but before i get to that, i need to deal with this proposed bit: that white people (and men) should just shut up and listen. if in a discussion of racism initiated by a person of colour they reply with anything other than active and skilled listening, they're recasting the conversation. if they defend themselves or ask too many questions, they are making it all about themselves.
*whew*. well, i feel i can't freely say much in reply to those posts because i've just been exhorted to shut up, and if i say anything that's not directly supportive it's gonna make that conversation all about me. i don't really care to derail it, even if i think the rails are running into an abyss.
but in my LJ, i am gonna talk about myself without guilt. not because it's all about me, but because i am the only person about whom i can speak knowledgeably, with authority, and without presumption. this is, btw, also what informs my preference for the pronoun "i" and those infamous weasel words such as "i believe", "i think", "in my experience", "in my opinion". it's not to elevate me as all-important, but it's to limit what i say to my experience, and to avoid speaking for anyone else. anyone who knows me at all knows that generalizations are my biggest pet peeve, and that it irks me when people say "we" and include others in their group by default because of some superficial trait they appear to have in common. i constantly ask people to please speak for themselves, and not for all of humanity, all {wo}men, all <nationality>. really, generalizations are much more than a peeve to me: i consider them to be the root of much evil. sloppy generalizations (and that would be the vast majority of them) are paving a broad pathway to the hell of stereotypes, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia...
somebody just outed me as "white" in another LJ because zie has met me, and i looked white to zir. did zie ask me about my ancestry? nope. zie assumed. and apparently looking white must mean that i've not experienced racism, and that i have nothing worthwhile to contribute to a discussion about it because i am privileged. did zie ask me about my experiences? nope. zie assumed. now, for one, i am not american. the vast majority of people in these discussions are talking as if american WASP culture were the de facto white culture of the world, period, and as if the racism said culture engages in against african-americans and other people of colour were the only racism in existence. it's parochial to assume that. (and it's not even particularly observant within the US itself -- i think racism against blacks is a different thing from racism against asians, frex). even liberal white american guilt, however worthy it may be, needs to generalize less, please.
i am 0 (zero) part american WASP. i am however 1/8th roma. if my birth family had not carefully hidden that part of the family history, i would very likely never have been born because my mother would have died in hitler's camps. but the family hid it long before the nazis came to power, they hid it out of shame and disgust; they hated those thieving gypsies. they felt the family blood had been tainted. i grew up as a dark child (in every sense of the world) in a lightskinned and fairhaired family. no, i don't know what it is like to grow up black in america. but i know a bit about growing up as an outsider, disrespected and distrusted for my appearance. no, i am not claiming this is the same. just that i did not live a pampered, sheltered, ever-so-privileged life as a child, and the life i did live has left scars i've been working long and hard to erase. yes, i am privileged in some ways -- after escaping my family i could blend into society; i do look white. did that white look-alike privilege make up for having a clinically insane mother, and the sexual abuse? i don't know -- how can one even measure that? in any case, i grappled with a form of racism very early on, though i didn't call it that, and it was a different form than institutionalized racism such as in the US. it doesn't make me black. but it gives me empathy for people who got dealt an outsider hand in the birth sweepstakes -- nothing more, but also nothing less. and for the record, i don't self-identify as white, and i never check the "caucasian" checkmark in surveys (i write in "human" or check "mixed race"). my relationship with my own racial background is complicated and personal -- and it's not even in the same ballpark as that of most americans.
listening is good, ya know. i am all for listening. i can even shut up for lengthy periods of time. heck, i am an introvert, offline i shut up much more than i yap, unless with close friends. i am known as a good listener; people come to me with their troubles, and usually leave feeling a little better. yup, i am greatly in favour of listening. people should definitely practice it, it's a special skillset, and i keep learning new things about it.
yes, we should listen, but not because we're white, or men, no. because we're individuals. because we don't know it all. because we don't live in a vacuum. because every single person's story is worth listening to, with attention, with care. because only if we listen carefully to each other in turn, do we learn how differently we perceive things, do we experience how strange and interesting our respective worlds are, do we hear the pain each one of us suffers, do we have a chance to develop true empathy, will we overcome the devil that lies in the details.
*whew*. well, i feel i can't freely say much in reply to those posts because i've just been exhorted to shut up, and if i say anything that's not directly supportive it's gonna make that conversation all about me. i don't really care to derail it, even if i think the rails are running into an abyss.
but in my LJ, i am gonna talk about myself without guilt. not because it's all about me, but because i am the only person about whom i can speak knowledgeably, with authority, and without presumption. this is, btw, also what informs my preference for the pronoun "i" and those infamous weasel words such as "i believe", "i think", "in my experience", "in my opinion". it's not to elevate me as all-important, but it's to limit what i say to my experience, and to avoid speaking for anyone else. anyone who knows me at all knows that generalizations are my biggest pet peeve, and that it irks me when people say "we" and include others in their group by default because of some superficial trait they appear to have in common. i constantly ask people to please speak for themselves, and not for all of humanity, all {wo}men, all <nationality>. really, generalizations are much more than a peeve to me: i consider them to be the root of much evil. sloppy generalizations (and that would be the vast majority of them) are paving a broad pathway to the hell of stereotypes, racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia...
somebody just outed me as "white" in another LJ because zie has met me, and i looked white to zir. did zie ask me about my ancestry? nope. zie assumed. and apparently looking white must mean that i've not experienced racism, and that i have nothing worthwhile to contribute to a discussion about it because i am privileged. did zie ask me about my experiences? nope. zie assumed. now, for one, i am not american. the vast majority of people in these discussions are talking as if american WASP culture were the de facto white culture of the world, period, and as if the racism said culture engages in against african-americans and other people of colour were the only racism in existence. it's parochial to assume that. (and it's not even particularly observant within the US itself -- i think racism against blacks is a different thing from racism against asians, frex). even liberal white american guilt, however worthy it may be, needs to generalize less, please.
i am 0 (zero) part american WASP. i am however 1/8th roma. if my birth family had not carefully hidden that part of the family history, i would very likely never have been born because my mother would have died in hitler's camps. but the family hid it long before the nazis came to power, they hid it out of shame and disgust; they hated those thieving gypsies. they felt the family blood had been tainted. i grew up as a dark child (in every sense of the world) in a lightskinned and fairhaired family. no, i don't know what it is like to grow up black in america. but i know a bit about growing up as an outsider, disrespected and distrusted for my appearance. no, i am not claiming this is the same. just that i did not live a pampered, sheltered, ever-so-privileged life as a child, and the life i did live has left scars i've been working long and hard to erase. yes, i am privileged in some ways -- after escaping my family i could blend into society; i do look white. did that white look-alike privilege make up for having a clinically insane mother, and the sexual abuse? i don't know -- how can one even measure that? in any case, i grappled with a form of racism very early on, though i didn't call it that, and it was a different form than institutionalized racism such as in the US. it doesn't make me black. but it gives me empathy for people who got dealt an outsider hand in the birth sweepstakes -- nothing more, but also nothing less. and for the record, i don't self-identify as white, and i never check the "caucasian" checkmark in surveys (i write in "human" or check "mixed race"). my relationship with my own racial background is complicated and personal -- and it's not even in the same ballpark as that of most americans.
listening is good, ya know. i am all for listening. i can even shut up for lengthy periods of time. heck, i am an introvert, offline i shut up much more than i yap, unless with close friends. i am known as a good listener; people come to me with their troubles, and usually leave feeling a little better. yup, i am greatly in favour of listening. people should definitely practice it, it's a special skillset, and i keep learning new things about it.
yes, we should listen, but not because we're white, or men, no. because we're individuals. because we don't know it all. because we don't live in a vacuum. because every single person's story is worth listening to, with attention, with care. because only if we listen carefully to each other in turn, do we learn how differently we perceive things, do we experience how strange and interesting our respective worlds are, do we hear the pain each one of us suffers, do we have a chance to develop true empathy, will we overcome the devil that lies in the details.
no subject
on 2006-06-05 19:25 (UTC)in contrast i agree with just about everything you said. i think active listening is an extremely useful skill, and dammit, why are we not all taught about it complete with lots of practice in school? why did i have to piece together my initial conversational skills bit by bit through careful observation? what if i hadn't been a natural observer? it's so much more important than being able to regurgitate the years when the ancient greeks and spartans battled each other. and now, where are the links to websites with practical advice on how to actually do it well? i would enjoy a thread to which we'd all bring examples of what conversational skills have worked for us and share those.
the small bit i disagree with in your post is that "i would never do that" is on par with the other things you might say -- i do find the former unuseful even if i grok wanting to defend oneself against charges of being a cad, but "i think that's horrible" and "i'm sorry" sound merely supportive to me, a first step towards encouraging the other person to say more, an attempt to provide a non-hostile environment. "you should never have to experience something like that" is a bit more iffy because well, *duh*, right, but so what, we don't live in an ideal world. however, giving some supportive feedback is important to not leave the other person hanging. and i really, really hate novice therapist feedback, it feels so very presumptuous, and dicks around with the power balance -- which is much worse than "i would never do that". i mean, i can deflect that easily by saying "i know; that's why i am talking to you at all", and then can continue to talk about my experience, but if somebody (who is not my therapist) pulls a pseudo-therapy card as their first conversational gambit, i immediately want to stop talking to them because i feel patronized.
what sort of feedback have you found to be successful, if you can say? should i start a new thread for that?
no subject
on 2006-06-05 20:17 (UTC)Finding the right angle for feedback is tough. And very personal. You're doing this for you and your relationship with the person you're talking to, so I'm sure that you would want to gently probe in the directions that seem important and interesting to you. Of course, to the degree that you perceive the exchange as a conversation that you are participating in and not a story that you are listening to, you're going to not hear everything that might have been available to you. Having said all that, here is what I think about individual tactics.
As a rule, I don't like saying "I'm sorry," unless it really is my fault. Because there are only two comfortable responses to "I'm sorry": "That's okay" and "It's not your fault". But bias is not okay, and I don't want my friend to have to start talking about me right now. The other point about remaining silent is that as a member of the majority, the simple views are already taken for granted. If she wasn't sure that I would be sorry, she wouldn't have felt safe telling me about it. I'd rather show her that I was sorry than to interrupt her simply for the pleasure of hearing my own voice.
I agree that "That shouldn't happen" is less objectionable, but I think it can be expressed better. First, it is the "well duh" effect again. Second, compare it to "I didn't appreciate that such things happened in this day to people so close to me." It's the same fundimental emotion, but the latter says "Tell me more, if you're willing," while the former comes closer to saying "I'm uncomfortable, so let's talk instead about a fantasy world that our children might not live to see." There is a time for reinforcing that viewpoint, but it's not right now and it's another place where showing is better than telling.
I would suspect that other potentially beneficial things to say would be along the lines of "How does it feel to carry this burden around," or "I feel privilidged that you trusted me with this story," but I'm sure that those things would feel more or less right to you depending on your analysis of the moment. At the same time, I have found that just saying "Wow." and remaining silent until your partner continues the story or prompts you or changes the subject is not fatal and may encourage future revelations.
no subject
on 2006-06-05 21:47 (UTC)i used to feel very similar to you about "i'm sorry", but i can handle it much better now. because most of the time what it means is "i am sorry that this happened to you", which is akin to saying "sorry for your loss" to a grieving person. and that's all a sympathetic stranger can say as the first thing without feeling foolish or overstepping bounds. i've come to actually prefer it from strangers, and i simply reply with "thank you". i don't feel that it is turning the conversation away from me at all; it just feels like an acknowledgment of my pain. it does, however, not per se encourage me to open up more about it; for that i need some additional words.
on the giving end, i've turned that insight into being more explicit about what i am actually sorry for, so it can't easily be mistaken for a request to be absolved from guilt, or given aid with my own discomfort. i'll say "i am so sorry this happened to you. do you want to talk about it? do you need anything? can i do something to help?". not always all those at once, but they tend to be the most common options. if i know a person well i might not speak at all, but if i know a person well i don't need general guidelines for what to say anyway. if i don't know a person i feel moved to say something because i want the person to feel safe to talk (or not talk) as zie needs.
on the other hand, "how does it feel..." rubs me completely the wrong way, like a reporter who sticks a mic in front of a father who has just lost his son. that is one of those pseudo-therapist comments that instantly make me clam up. it might fit later in the conversation, but i'd never ever say this as the first thing, after somebody has blurted out "my boss is sexually harassing me", for example.
i think i basically avoid the whole "shouldn't happen" in all its incarnations, because it's just too much about fantasy than about the horrid thing that did, in fact, happen.
"i feel privileged that you trusted me with this story" is for the end of it, not the start. that one definitely feels like it could easily pull things into "hey, look at me!" territory, and i am really careful with saying it, even though i do often feel it.
"wow" is ok as the first thing out of my mouth, and it might even happen involuntarily. but standing on its own it feels insufficient; it's too open to interpretation. i like explicitness in general. "tell me more if you're willing" is great. depending on the circumstances i might admit that i am uncomfortable, and that i might not be the best person to talk to, and offer to help find somebody else.
i think your comments about approaching it on a very personal level, and gently probing are really important. emphasis on "gently". this should happen at the speed of the person who's hurting. one size does not fit all. and yes, it makes a difference to my approach whether i think we're engaged in a conversation, a debate, whether i am listening to a story, or whether i am in an advisory position. online discussion feels generally like a conversation or debate (and i avoid the latter), unless the speaker defines it otherwise at the start. this is an area in which i am learning to step much more carefully because oh man, livejournal is so much less automatically about conversation than usenet is.