Kali Tal

Kali -

Greetings, and abundant support for your engagement of the the 'Borg. As a man in this society, having grown up thru the 60's & 70's, I have come to realize that one of the profound misconceptions within our social dynamic is that the experience -- or assumption -- of privilege precludes/trumps the need to enlightenment, or even expansive engagement. This is the greatest of arrogance -- that what is presently seen & known is all there is to see & know, and, perhaps more crucially, that the tools/mindset(s) used in our exploration are wholly adequate for this adventure, and the evolution of tools & contexts is unnecessary.

If I am describing an experience, a perception, and someone listening feels excluded, so much so that in order for them to participate, they feel compelled to create an alternate characterization of the milieu -- say like the term "AfroFuturism" -- then, as the speaker, I must examine the mode & context of my expression to discern if there are in fact exclusionary references in my verbiage. The only circumstances where such an effort might be deemed unnecessary is when, as the speaker, I consider my power position to place me above the concerns of those claiming exclusion, or, again, from my power position, I feel those claiming exclusion do not -- or worse, are unable -- to comprehend the *universal* context of my characterization.

Clearly, any time anyone presumes *their* perspective to be "universal" when it obviously does not include all references even on this tiny planet, they are dealing a place of psychotic delusion, and anyone exposing/revealing or pointing out the flaws in their perspective will be treated like a heretic. This is nothing but the "circle pass-me-not" of the early church dogma. These are the same people who say they want to visit other cultures, then travel to India, Thailand or Venezuela and stay at the Hilton or the Marriott, eating at the hotel.

The egalitarian mode is one which presupposes a level of self-comfort, self-esteem and confidence in self sufficient to _allow_ one to be open. If one is fearful, or feels threatened, it is impossible for them to open enough to embrace anything beyond the confines of their familiarity.

Rest assured that this is a cultural virus, what I refer to in my work as the Western retrovirus, and it is infecting the entire planet, across the board, not just in academia or fields of intellectual repartee. As an engineer, I experience this daily. Whether in aerospace or semiconductor technology, it is rampant. I feel the proliferation of technology is the disease vector for the retrovirus, that and commerce/economics. The bottom line is, the instant a non-white person -- via biology or socialization -- begins to engage white folks as an equal, this is deemed rebellion. The real conundrum is, when white people encounter a non-white person who is, to their own perception(WP) intellectually, expressively &/or creatively superior to them, you become the nightmare monster of the moment -- King Kong, Godzilla, the Predator & Alien combined. Use vocabulary they are not familiar with, or a technical reference they do not know, and suddenly it's emotional nuclear war...as you are rediscovering.

The bottom line is the West is not civilized. It has a veneer of civilization, but like any adolescent, as soon as things don't go their way, they throw a tantrum. The problem here is that the adolescent -- acne & all -- is driving the car, possesses all the guns, and controls the banks...and we know how insecure adolescents can be. Keep in mind, there are few things more dangerous than a frightened/threatened animal. When asked by mayor Lindsay(of NYC) what he thought of western civilization after a tour of Manhattan, Gandhi replied "I think it would be a good idea..."

Thanks for the wonderful, descriptive post. It captures exactly the phenomenon with which I've been dealing. "Tantrum" is truly the only word for it — the flying-into-a-rage that happens when white men are opposed by women and people of color. How dare we!? How can we not know our place!?

I often find myself in an odd position in this process, since I'm a white woman simultaneously committed to antiracism and feminism. I'm accepted in the "white club" by the white boys for the (always short) time before I bring race issues to the forefront, after which point I'm dismissed both as a woman and as a race traitor (one of "them"). My name tends to give white people who know me only online the idea I'm not white, and often, because I bring up race issues repeatedly, they rhetorically treat me as if I'm a rebellious person of color. (In the latter case, some groups will even ignore my whiteness -- which I don't hide at all -- and go on writing flames as if I'm black or South Asian because white people can't talk like me.)

Like you, I've observed the complacency in those who are born with privilege, and I spend a lot of my time fighting it where I see it. Since white men are at least in some fashion "my people," I feel a responsibility to kick their asses for racist behavior, and there's never any shortage of need for ass-kicking. Unfortunately, listening isn't to their advantage, and so they don't do it very well. They're happy enough to remain oppressive assholes as long as they can manage it, however uncomfortable I can make them. And they get very nasty and vindictive when I do succeed in making them uncomfortable.

I use that Gandhi quote in rotation on my home page, by the way.

Kali-

You're not using the term 'white man' to just discuss the broad category 'white men', though, as much as you're using it to describe a certain group of white men (albeit one that arguably occupies an ideological majority) - the use of the term completely erases (as Judith Butler or Judith Irvine et al would say) the idea of white men who in fact ARE feminists, african-americanists, equalitists, or what have you, which goes into dangerous territory (I doubt that's why Sanger took offense to the overgeneralization, but it's why I do). As a feminist and advocate of queer politics myself, erasure of ANY kind, but especially a minority within a dominant group, seems a step backwards (sticking it to the man or not). My two cents :)

As far as the use of terms like 'nazi' or 'fascist' as a kind of dismissal of another speaker's stance, I can't think of any language and gender work that focuses on that issue - you might want to see if any of the work in conversation analysis looks at it, though. If the work's been done with a focus on language, it's probably been done in there.

joshua, I'm not a Judith Butler fan for a variety of reasons. One of them is that I think her grasp of race issues is very, very weak and that this weakness compromises her conclusions about gender and sexuality. (I think her work on passing is a travesty.) You and I come from very different theoretical backgrounds, and we clearly feel quite differently about the use and importance of general categories.

I use the term "white men" very deliberately and carefully. As you note, the "certain group of white men" I'm describing is ideologically the dominant group. The (I believe quite small) minority of white men who don't buy into that ideology still find themselves the recipients of unearned race and gender privileges, whether they like it or not.

I've used this example before, and I'm sure I'll use it again. You're a feminist guy. I'm an antiracist white person. As members of each oppressor group -- whatever our individual politics -- we are granted privileges that our female and nonwhite peers don't have. We swim in this privilege like fish in an ocean. We can notice we're in water sometimes, but it's hardly possible to be aware of it 24/7 even when we work at it, and yet the privileges are in effect 24/7.

When members of less privileged groups, oppressed groups, resist the structures that oppress them, what they are resisting is exactly the category "men" or the category "white", which are used as justifications for their oppression. Women and nonwhite people didn't create those categories: men and white people did. Those categories exist solely because they enforce power hierarchies based on exclusion. Thus, anyone -- male or female -- who opposes sexism opposes "men," while anyone -- black or white -- who opposes racism opposes "white people."

We all know there are individual exceptions within these larger categories. You are an exception. I am an exception. But what MAKES us exceptions is that we realize that these oppressive structures exist. How disingenuous is it, then, to complain that when the oppressed describe the class of people that oppresses them, they should be careful not to hurt the feelings of particular individual members of that class?

When my black colleagues and friends are dealing with racism, it's my job, as an antiracist activist and scholar, to listen respectfully and to understand that they're not talking about me. They're talking about the class of people I involuntary belong to and whose values I have repudiated. Demanding that black people take time out from their liberation struggle to reassure me I'm a decent person is pretty self-indulgent, don't you think? Shouldn't I be fighting for equality and liberation because it's the right thing to do, and not because I want recognition and pats on the back? Shouldn't I understand that they're contesting a system, not running me down as a person?

I understand your concern with erasure, but as a white antiracist activist, my experience with being "erased" has ALWAYS been at the hands of white people and not black people. It's white people who can't tolerate my support and advocacy for black liberation, not black people who can't tolerate or support me because I'm white. The male feminists I know are in a similar position when it comes to women.

If you take away our ability to name and protest categories of privilege based on race and gender, and demand that we deal with everyone only on the basis of their individual nature, you create an impossible set of conditions for those who struggle for race or gender freedom. Trust women and black people to know who our real friends are -- we have a vested interest in knowing -- and stop identifying with gender and race categories that are clearly opposed to the principles for which you claim to stand. Feel strong and confident enough in your feminism and antiracism to understand that we're not talking about you.

I applaud your stand against the perpetuation of bigotted attitudes. It's especially saddening that they're found in such a new, and one would hope less inherently ignorant, environment. I think the lesson to be learned from this fiasco is that academics and other experts should acknoledge the egalitarian spirit that exists within Wikipedia as an asset. Though it does poorly and makes quite a mess Wikipedia is, to paraphrase (the noted bigot) Churchill, the worst community-based attempt at knowledge creation on the web, except for everything else. Sanger seems bent not on creating a place to share knowledge, but rather a fiefdom, where his experts can declare experts to be people who agree with him. The place of the academic in regard to Wikipedia and Wikipedia-like projects is still being shaped and it must include the voices of the traditionally underrepresented.

Elijah, I completely agree that the egalitarianism of Wikipedia is a strength, and I'd hoped that Citizendium would aim for a balance between the broadest possible participation and some mechanism for quality control. I think this would be possible, too, if it weren't for Larry Sanger's insistance on using Citizendium as a political platform... whatever his claims to the contrary.

It's a kind of Orwellian doublespeak to at once claim a position of neutrality, and then to use that position to enforce and reinforce cultural biases that exclude, in a very non-neutral fashion, groups that are already marginalized.

As I've said in my discussions with Sanger, the Enlightenment principles supporting the idea of "neutrality" (the central tenet of Citizendium) are not, in themselves, the problem. The problem is that the very people who mouth the rhetoric of neutrality often refuse to apply it in their dealings with others. Instead, the word "neutrality" is used in opposition to the word "political," and groups deemed political by the White Man In Charge are claimed to be justifiably excluded from the mix. The groups thus red-lined are primarily comprised of women and people of color, but that is considered to simply be an "accident" and not, therefore, a problem. After all, women and minorities can participate any time they like... if they're willing to do so on Larry Sanger's terms.

If public intellectual projects on the scale of Wikipedia are going to be useful in the long term, providing quality information to the broadest possible audience, they're going to have to be designed, from the ground up, to incorporate the voices of marginalized and underrepresented groups.

A key component will be giving the members of these groups a stake in the project from the beginning, so that there is incentive to participate -- it must benefit that community. This means deliberately recruiting and giving real power to minority and female scholars -- not reserving final authority for an insider group of white men. Sharing power is difficult, and will surely force most of the white men involved out of their comfort zones, but it is the only way to actually live up to the Enlightenment principles to which Wikipedia and Citizendium currently give lip service.

[editor's note: I apologize for the late posting of this comment, but I have been out of town]

Came on this discussion as cross-posted to AFAM-L.

"I can make a word mean anything I want it to mean... the question is, who shall be master?" Alice in Wonderland

"Until the lions have historians, history will always honor the hunter" African Proverb

I started to register with CZ just to post these two comments to the forum, but then decided I wasn't willing to offer the afirmation of my registeration to the site.

However, I offer them here as suitable observations for those already embroiled in the CZ discussion - as I offer the evidence of my own refusal to register!

In addition, I applaud your righteous struggle and the validity of your position.

ra!

ra!