The R-Word

So, as Americans and those of us foreigners with morbid fascinations are aware, that loveable scamp Glenn Beck held his “restoring honor” rally in an attempt to “reclaim” the civil rights movement from those perky liberals who somehow got into their heads that Dr. King cared about things like economic equality and social justice. Now, plenty of people have picked apart this whole sordid affair a lot more eloquently than I could hope to, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why it’s patently offensive for a man who decried Obama’s healthcare plan as a reparations scheme, playing off the fears of white Republicans that their money will go to BLACK PEOPLE, to attempt to co-opt the legacy of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s most important figures on the anniversary of his most famous speech. That isn’t what I want to talk about, though.


Everyone knows that there is no shortage of denialists when it comes to racism. They’re the folks, many of them not necessarily malicious people, who believe that racism ended so many years ago when that Martin Luther King guy they kinda learned about in high school talked about having a dream and racial inequality across the western world just vanished into thin air. They’re the folks who only see racism when it’s coming out of the mouth of a guy in a white hood whose family tree is a straight line, or a guy with a shaved head who’s perpetually unemployed because most employers don’t agree with him on how kickin’ rad his swastika facial tattoos are (though they are typically rightfully outraged about this type of racism). They claim to not even see race, because well shucks, if they noticed it than that would be more racist than anything! They’re the folks who cluelessly accuse people of color of oversensitivity when they comment that the Tea Party has a bit of racist streak. They are typically white, though every now and then you have a person of color who has “made it” (either through hard work, other social privileges, or a combination of the two) and thinks that dammit, if I could do it then every other person must be able to as well!


If some of that sounds a bit harsh, I apologize, because I don’t think that most of the people in this category are bad people. They absolutely are misguided, and the denial of racism is the biggest reason that it is able to continue and grow. However, even as a person of color myself, it’s hard to hold much of a grudge against them personally when they’re buying into the depressingly common and incorrect notions about racism that are continuously repeated and held up to be correct (the colorblind one especially). That said, even if they aren’t all bad people, having a discussion with them regarding the continued existence of racism and privilege is still challenging. They’re essentially being told that their “common sense” view of race relations is entirely incorrect, and that they are privileged when many of them may feel that they have not lead a privileged life at all. So naturally, they tend to get very defensive and as anti-racists, we want to get past that.


So, if you’re someone who wants to maintain a system of white privilege, then you want to encourage white defensiveness and feed the notion that anti-racism is about attacking people for being white. So you go one step further than saying that people who complain about racism are just oversensitive; you tell people that they are the REAL racists. You take the term racist, and transform it into “the R-word”, a slur against white people. This does three things: the first is that it puts the person standing up to racism on the same level as the previously mentioned skinhead or KKK member. When you’re dealing with people who believe that this is the only form that racism takes, then you must be just as bad as them, and therefore someone worthy only being ignored at the least and scorned at the worst. Secondly, it appeals to the denialist’s sense of victimization. As I’ve mentioned, people tend to get defensive when you talk about racial privilege, either because they do not view themselves are privileged and assume that you are making light of their own hardships, or because they believe that you are suggesting they are somehow undeserving of their situation. Start telling people that the person talking to them about racism is the real racist, though, and you can add “hates you for being white” onto that list as well.


It is the third effect that is the most sinister, and it is that it silences and disempowers people of color. As a person of color, when I point out to a white person that something they have said or done is racially insensitive, ignorant, or just outright hateful, they have the choice of whether to listen to me, to dismiss me, or to declare me oversensitive. This is what white privilege is; the ability of a white person to ignore or heed the perspectives and feelings of people of color as they see fit. In spite of this, the ability to call out racism is the one way that we are able to defend ourselves if we find ourselves in a hostile environment. By turning this act of defense into an act of aggression, and turning the perpetrators of racism into victims, we are effectively vilified and silenced. Racist comments and thinking go unopposed, because to do so would make us the real racists. We cannot call it for what it is, because we must dare not use the “R-word”.


Glenn Beck’s rally was more than just metaphorically pissing on MLK’s grave, it was a celebration of this notion that anti-racists are the only true racists. It isn’t the first time this sentiment has reared its ugly head; the vilification of the NAACP during the Shirley Sherrod fiasco because of the laughter heard in her heavily edited speech also demonstrated it, and up here in the Great White North a letter to one of my city’s major newspapers decried the injustice of the “R-word” and was snarkily agreed with by the editorial board (also the inspiration for the title of this piece – guess racists can be good for something!).However, the celebration of that sentiment on such a large scale should be of great concern to anyone who’s even cared about racism in passing. If anti-racism is successfully vilified then we can expect not only to not progress when it comes to racism, but to go backwards. Let’s make sure the “R-word” is the one slur we’re willing to use.

Spoon-Feeding a Big Baby their Medicine

It’s important to state a few things up front.

First, if a person of privilege does or says something racist or sexist out of hatred, they have created a hostile environment that anyone in their right mind would and should call out and be offended by and are right in reacting with equal hostility. Their reactions are their reactions, and to try to tell them they are wrong in their reactions is at best deflectionary, and at worst an overt attempt to subjugate them and dominate them from the position of power. The only thing that is wrong is the initial sentiment that sparked the reaction in this exchange.

Second, it’s not a person of lower privilege’s job to educate the person of privilege on what they said was wrong or terrible. We are the people of privilege. We have the means to open a book, use our brains, or even use Google. People of lower privilege are not exotic creatures to be studied; they are people.

Third, if a person of lower privilege tells you that what you said is racist, sexist, whatever, you should just shut up and listen. You are a person of privilege. How can you possibly tell someone who is being oppressed that they are not being oppressed. Sure, there are exceptions here. In all my research, I could only find one.

Man uses the term Black Hole

Here is a hint: you are not ever going to be in a situation like this. Shut up and listen.

Taking into account everything previously mentioned, if you say something ignorant one of three things will happen:

1. You get called on it. Someone tells you in a matter of fact way what you just said was ignorant. You sincerely apologize, and perhaps ask for further clarification. This is the best-case scenario. Here is a real life example- Once I used the term Mulatto to describe someone of mixed race. Someone told me what I said was racist and explained Mulatto translated roughly to half-breed and that I shouldn’t use it. I apologized and never used the term again.
2. You get called on it. Someone tells you off, you get defensive, they storm out of the room, or you storm out of the room (and the white people go running after ) Real life example- I once said that dressing up in blackface for Halloween was not offensive ( I was a fucking idiot, clearly). Someone took offense and called me on it. I told them that it wasn’t offensive and they were being oversensitive. They got madder. They left.
3. No one says anything, either because of fear or group ignorance.

If you say something stupid, you deserve nothing more than reaction number 2. Someone throwing the hostility of the situation you had just created back into your face. Reaction number 3 happens too often, and reactions number 1 is yet another example of privileged people’s privilege.

People of lower privilege, I am sorry that something else to worry about is being tossed on your plate. There are times when you will have to strongly consider reaction 1. I’m not talking about some asshole you hear on the bus, but someday, someone you really care about is going to say something ignorant, and they will be unable to respond to anything but spoon-fed medicine.

It sucks and I am so sorry.

-Ken

Boo Fucking Hoo

Hello. My name is Ken. I am a 26 year old white heterosexual male.

I am so sick of white people complaining about how tough it is to be white.

What made me start this blog? I have been learning a lot over the last year or so what it means to be on the privileged side of society, and how badly us white folk are straight up fucking over everyone else to keep it that way. I've had to walk away from most of the people I called friends because they were on the wrong side of everything. All this has been building and building over the last year, but most recently, today I read the following news story:

NYC cab driver stabbed because he is Muslim

To sum it up, a man asked a cab driver in NYC if he was a Muslim, and the driver responded in the affirmative. The passenger then said in Arabic “Consider this a checkpoint” and proceeded to stab the driver in the neck and face and arms with a Leather-man.

Fucking awful. Shocking, but not that surprising considering all of the race-baiting xenophobia being manufactured in that city currently because them durn moslems r building a terrorist assembly line on the graves of dead 9/11 victims.

This was not enough for me to get pissed off enough to start writing about it.

What I do when I hear about terrible things like this, is go to other blogs and forums that are center-right to all the way batshit Libertarian nutjob land and see how they are reacting to whatever bit of terrible that comes up on one of my many news aggregators.

What I found on Free Republic was just so infuriating that I had to get up and walk away from my computer:

“This is a hate crime....hundreds of black youths attacking white folks at the Iowa State Fair is not....that is all....”

Boo Fucking Hoo. If I had to describe white people in four words: “FUCK YOU, GOT MINE”

It's Dr. Laura complaining about having to worry about a “special interest group” when she goes on a racist rant where the usage of the N word more than 10 times IS THE LEAST RACIST PART. It's Sarah Palin, her fucking stupid followers, who encouraged “Dr.” Laura to reload rather than retreat (totally oblivious to the fact that Sarah Palin and those white people whipped up into a froth recently lost their collective shit over someone else on the other side ((the side that wants to make everyone gay and force abortions on grandma)) said the word retard). It's Glenn Beck and his group of idiots who are flipping out over an Islamic Community center in Manhattan and how it's so fucking insensitive when, not even pausing to take a breath in between, extoll and promote the fact that they are going to have a rally on the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Dr. King's “I Have a Dream” speech.

It's all this bullshit. All of it that makes me embarrassed to be a white male. While all this bullshit is going on, just FIVE years ago, we all sat and watched as all the brown folks down south get left for dead during Katrina. We watched cops shooting the colored people that were “looting” food because the white people in power were too busy patting each other on the back for a job well done on getting all the rich white folks out in time.

I am sorry this is so all over the place, I am just really pissed off.

I guess I'll just leave the three people that will read this with one thought:

Rich, powerful white men became rich and powerful and stay that way because they learned a long time ago to teach the poor, powerless white men to be terrified and hate the even poorer and even less powerful brown men.

Hopefully, I'll calm down a little bit over the next few days and put something coherent together.

-Ken