renaissance poisson

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the fruit of an insomniac night, inspired by derailing for dummies.

so 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.