Another beautiful intense workshop today, beginning with sharing readings “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson; “Uncomfortable Conversations With A Black Man” by Emmanuel Acho; “A People’s History of the United States”.
We moved on to the ‘challenges’ of living in an all or majority white town and sharpening our abilities seeing/confronting/demolishing racism; not waiting for Black or brown people to show up before being able to see racism and engage in anti-racism actions.
We delved into the unconscious, seemingly “innocent” actions we do as white people, not being aware of or of realizing the historical and present day racist impact that same action has on Black or brown people. We began this conversation last time with the toilet paper incident; this time the white dog walker, seeing a Black man approaching, moves to the side of the road to allow him to pass, and not comprehending his “oh typical” remark.
We talked about once we know that white people often flee to the other side of the street, bus, etc., when a Black person approaches, we can be aware and not engage in that behavior. Processing with the dog walker she realized she didn’t make eye contact, greet her neighbor, or connect in any way.
This led into a prolonged discussion of the racism behind the “color blind” stance, the “I treat everyone the same”, “We’re all human beings” traps white people fall into. The seemingly ‘benign’ reasoning behind such a view can be the desire to attempt to not be the blatant bigot; on the other end of that continuum is the comfort of white people – we feel much more comfortable if we can pretend we don’t ‘see’ skin color, etc.
We also talked about our language and becoming more and more aware of the ‘normal’ everyday language laced with racism. For example, instead of labeling white people’s actions as ‘stupid’, we need to label it ‘racism’; instead of referring to ‘third world’, we call it ‘looted, genocided, exploited, colonized’ country or peoples; instead of ‘Indian, Native american’ we change our language to ‘First Nation, Indigenous, Original Peoples’.
We discussed this racist post going around facebook, especially on some pages of white womyn who call themselves radical feminists. Viewing this post, our racism red flags should be gale – force waving. Here is my response in my attempt to dissect and explain the racism inherent in this post:
“It's that most white womyn did not stand up against white people mocking, 'appropriating', stereotyping, flaunting white superiority while claiming Black inferiority when this was such a popular thing among white people; & now all the sudden, white womyn are crying & recognizing there could be the same intention driving the slamming/mocking of WOMYN (including white womyn) as there was when whites were slamming/mocking of Black womyn, children & men. Furthermore to then hypocritically demand that Black people recognize this as fueled by a similar oppressive force and therefore need to stand behind white womyn who've never stood as anti-racists with the threat of ignoring that white assault if drag is ignored. Really???”
One of the white womyn’s response:
“my family has resided in Appalachia for hundreds of years. Do you think that, because of their skin color, they didn't suffer while digging coal seams less than 36 inches tall? That they didn't suffer extreme poverty? That women didn't suffer even worse than their men? That they didn't--and still don't--experience discrimination? Are you so foolish as to assume everybody with light skin is affluent? Please! Read a little about Appalachia, where I continue to reside, and then lecture me about how easy White women have had it.”
And my response to her:
“white people don't suffer because of skin color - they might suffer because of poverty or lack of access to resources, etc, but not because of their skin color. Whereas Black & brown people are discriminated against because of their skin color. Where did I say every light skinned person is affluent? I said every white person has been carefully taught racism and has benefitted from racism, and yes, some more than others. And yes white womyn are the targets of sexism, heterosexism, misogyny AND Black, brown, First Nation womyn are targets of all those isms PLUS racism. And also where did u read me saying white womyn have it easy? I hope this is a little clearer.”
And here is the original racist post:
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