ysabetwordsmith (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2021-11-27 05:36 am
ysabetwordsmith) wrote2021-11-27 05:36 am
Entry tags:
The Problem of "Woke Racism"
The antiracism movement has, regrettably, forgotten what racism actually means. The whole "woke" thing is performative rather than practical. Oh, and anything that quashes discussion and dissent is almost certainly a bad idea.
Racism isn't about who you are or how you look. It's about what you DO. It's a belief that some groups of people are inherently inferior, and then acting on that belief by trying to oppress them. This has nothing to do with what vagina you fell out of or how much pigment you have. It has to do with thinking your appearance entitles you to act like an asshole. Just because some people think skin color is important, doesn't mean you have to agree with them. You are free to call it stupid. You still have to deal with the mess they make, but that doesn't make their nonsense valid.
Antiracism is the same. It doesn't matter what you say or what slogan you wear. The only thing that matters is whether you support or oppose the interests of diverse people.
You want to fight racism? Listen to what people of color ask for -- things like "Stop murdering us" and "We need affordable housing" and "Don't run oil pipes through our water supply." Then simply back their goals.
https://reparationscomm.org/reparations-plan
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/25/us/indigenous-people-reclaiming-their-lands-trnd/index.html
https://unitedwedream.org/our-work/#campaigns
https://www.thedemands.org
As much as possible, support people of color in solving their own problems. Encourage them to lead. You can reduce the tendency toward tokenism by trying to get them in clusters instead of alone, and making sure they have authority and resources to make meaningful choices.
Look at your strengths and skills. How can you apply that to undermining the idea that skin color is a thing which matters? I happen to be a writer, so my contributions include things like boosting the signal and writing culturally diverse characters. *chuckle* And some very subversive classes in which I hooked some mostly black and brown prison inmates on reading and writing.
Another option, open to everyone, is shopping. Buy goods and services from businesses owned by people of color. Pour resources into their communities.
https://intentionalist.com/b/tag/minority-owned
https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/people-of-color
As always, check your results as you go along. You do not want to create solution-caused problems.
Be aware that skin privilege is NOT as indelible as some people say it is. It rubs right off as soon as you align with people of color. People might mistake you for a racist from a distance but the difference should come clear as soon as you open your mouth and tell them where to shove their jokes, their NIMBYism, or their thin blue line. Choose mindfully. Some of them will be just as happy to beat you to death as they would your friends of color.
Racism isn't about who you are or how you look. It's about what you DO. It's a belief that some groups of people are inherently inferior, and then acting on that belief by trying to oppress them. This has nothing to do with what vagina you fell out of or how much pigment you have. It has to do with thinking your appearance entitles you to act like an asshole. Just because some people think skin color is important, doesn't mean you have to agree with them. You are free to call it stupid. You still have to deal with the mess they make, but that doesn't make their nonsense valid.
Antiracism is the same. It doesn't matter what you say or what slogan you wear. The only thing that matters is whether you support or oppose the interests of diverse people.
You want to fight racism? Listen to what people of color ask for -- things like "Stop murdering us" and "We need affordable housing" and "Don't run oil pipes through our water supply." Then simply back their goals.
https://reparationscomm.org/reparations-plan
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/25/us/indigenous-people-reclaiming-their-lands-trnd/index.html
https://unitedwedream.org/our-work/#campaigns
https://www.thedemands.org
As much as possible, support people of color in solving their own problems. Encourage them to lead. You can reduce the tendency toward tokenism by trying to get them in clusters instead of alone, and making sure they have authority and resources to make meaningful choices.
Look at your strengths and skills. How can you apply that to undermining the idea that skin color is a thing which matters? I happen to be a writer, so my contributions include things like boosting the signal and writing culturally diverse characters. *chuckle* And some very subversive classes in which I hooked some mostly black and brown prison inmates on reading and writing.
Another option, open to everyone, is shopping. Buy goods and services from businesses owned by people of color. Pour resources into their communities.
https://intentionalist.com/b/tag/minority-owned
https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/people-of-color
As always, check your results as you go along. You do not want to create solution-caused problems.
Be aware that skin privilege is NOT as indelible as some people say it is. It rubs right off as soon as you align with people of color. People might mistake you for a racist from a distance but the difference should come clear as soon as you open your mouth and tell them where to shove their jokes, their NIMBYism, or their thin blue line. Choose mindfully. Some of them will be just as happy to beat you to death as they would your friends of color.
Thoughts
If it's just lip service, it won't change anything. The problem I see with people focusing on abstract or symbolic things is that real, necessary change gets ignored.
They'll get all lathered up about a flag or a street name or one statue. That may be fun for them, but to me it looks like swinging at shadow's instead of cutting the opponent off at the knees. I'm more like ...
Statues: Let's survey the statues in town and their demographics. Compare that to the demographics of people living here. Then whenever a new statue is to be added, make it for one of the underrepresented categories, until this type of public art matches local demographics. This way, everyone will be able to see themselves represented, which makes them feel more welcome, which improves mental health and civic engagement.
Housing: Survey the units in town and the souls on board. Are there enough units in good condition to house everyone? If not, make it easier to build more units of whatever type is needed most. In many places, that's affordable housing. If you don't need high-end units, don't approve any projects for those. Check your barriers to construction and remove any that block whatever you need.
Concrete changes to improve people's lives.
>> They don't agree with each other, but I should never presume to apply common sense to decide which of the many ally-options offered seems likely to be most useful, as my common sense is just "white" thinking. <<
Anyone who tries to rule out my common sense gets classified as a nonrational obstacle and ignored, avoided, worked around, or worked against as necessary.
I can see how "white thinking" could be a problem for white people, but it's not hard to broaden perspectives by studying what other people have said.
>> Thus, since my common sense doesn't apply, I am expected to choose among actions by some other means, such as my own convenience ;-( So performative breast beating is all that's expected/required from me.<<
That's just a distraction that doesn't fix anything. It supports the status quo.
People get really pissed off when I point this out. I don't care. I'm a bard, pissing off the powerful is part of my job.
>> Fortunately (?), I'm a "bad ally." So instead of turning off my mind, my empathy, and my "white" common sense, I continue to do what I was taught back before the new rules were publicized enough for me to have heard of them, if they even existed at all. "Do not unto others as you would not wish to be done by". <<
That's a great rule.
>> Don't treat people differently because of irrelevant characteristics, including especially those out of their control. <<
Sooth.
>> And I empathize, or not, based on shared characteristics, not officially preferred identities like race.<<
Well reasoned.
I think a big part of it is about how people relate to others. If ICE raids a town in search of undocumented persons, then I feel angry and threatened, because I do not want to deal with the fucking Gestapo, because I know exactly where that leads. White people don't feel threatened because they don't relate to "those people."
>> Sadly, what I do is only one drop in a large ocean, and many of the other drops are working at cross purposes.<<
Yeah, but it's better than nothing. Most of the time when a life or a world gets saved, the person doing it doesn't even realize. Tiny actions and kindnesses can change history in unexpected ways.
>> I'm not successful at fighting city hall even on my own behalf. If "my" government or my employer is actively discriminatory - as I think they both are (against blacks; I'm not dog-whistling about affirmative action) there's precious little I can do. I'm left treating the few blacks who do get through as 100% peers, with extra consideration for the painful life experience they are probably carrying along with them. And not having a fit if they want to keep to their own, and avoid people like me they see as white - same like anyone who doesn't want to spend time with me for any other reason.<<
Every little bit helps.
>> [Note: I went from BIPOC to black, because in the real world, I've got bazillions of BIPOC colleagues, with themselves or their recent ancestors mostly coming from the Indian subcontinent, or other parts of Asia. <<
Fair enough.
>> I don't see anyone acting biased against them in the workplace, and even the local cops behave well when some loon does display overt bias. (e.g. One of my Indian colleagues called the cops on some assshole who wanted to take her half-white child away from her, on the grounds she couldn't possibly be his mother.) <<
That's encouraging.
>> These people don't get an entirely fair deal, but the issues are different and generally lesser. Other BIPOC groups get about as bad a deal as black people, but again, with different issues.<<
It does vary.
>> One aspect of performative anti-racism is that this complexity is never noticed; "intersectionality" appears to be taboo.] <<
People have always tended to ignore that, except for those activists who focus on it. Race, gender, religion, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, etc. -- everyone is a tesseract of identities, and few people have the most popular version in ALL of those. Most people have several unpopular ones. Intersectionality is the norm. With gender alone, half of every other group is intersectional because they're female. Which is sort of obvious.
Re: Thoughts
This!
I try to remind myself on the one hand, that some people care a lot more about things I'd shrug off, and on the other hand, that sometimes it's better to do what one can, than nothing at all.
But when my employer changed the name of its mainline source code repository from "master" (the default) to something else I promptly forgot, lest the word "master" cause offense, I looked around at all the non-black faces among my colleagues, and was singularly unimpressed.
Yes, they also announced yet another recruitment effort, and I went on leave before there could reasonably have been results, so I couldn't verify that this one did in fact work about as badly as all their prior efforts. But the whole thing seemed totally petty and a bit ridiculous.
Re: Thoughts
Same here. They also don't care about a lot of things that matter greatly to me, and in fact, actively work against solving problems like climate change or the artificial shortage of affordable housing.
>> and on the other hand, that sometimes it's better to do what one can, than nothing at all. <<
Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can. That's a permaculture approach. But you have to know what you're doing in order to choose small steps that have meaningful and positive results. A poorly conceived bike lane that makes the street uncomfortable so people avoid it is not an improvement.
>>But when my employer changed the name of its mainline source code repository from "master" (the default) to something else I promptly forgot, lest the word "master" cause offense, I looked around at all the non-black faces among my colleagues, and was singularly unimpressed.<<
No shit. They're still doing the master role, they're just pretending they aren't. In fact, one of the things that makes modern racism so dangerous is that it's more covert and thus harder to protest and dig out.
>>Yes, they also announced yet another recruitment effort, and I went on leave before there could reasonably have been results, so I couldn't verify that this one did in fact work about as badly as all their prior efforts. But the whole thing seemed totally petty and a bit ridiculous.<<
Their petty performance issues are probably why they don't have good diversity. Don't just look at "recruitment," look at retention. How many people of color are hired, but quit or get fired after a short time? It's likely higher than the numbers for white people.
Are they asking current employees of color "Do you know any ethnic folks who might like to apply for this job?" Are they advertising in ethnic newspapers, or sending people with flyers to post them on bulletin boards in ethnic neighborhoods? Hitting up the nearest historically black college or ethnic studies department at a mixed college for applicants? I would expect not.
I know how much extra work it takes to hustle people in order to fix an imbalance, because I've done it -- not with race, with gender. PanGaia (all genders) always got some spillover from SageWoman (female focused) so ensuring we had at least one male author in every issue (more if possible) took serious effort. You can't just sit on your butt and choose from the stuff that comes in, there's not enough. You have to go out and get it. Most people just aren't willing to do that much extra work, and some don't know how.