What does questioning our own privilege look like?

[sev]

Heard anything lately about the day care ejected from the swim club in Pennsylvania? I went hunting for information and found that the day care, invited back, declined & decided to sue instead. Good for them.

That CNN article got me thinking about what does it look like to actually, genuinely resist racism, to check our own privilege, to work for social justice?

The Valley Swim Club "asked the Creative Steps day care to return." The director of the day care says that nobody from the swim club contacted the day care with that request: "The only thing that I've heard has been third party via the media."

Right. Put on a nice face for the (white) media, and forget to speak at all to the injured parties. Sheesh. They're not sorry they hurt anybody. They're just sorry they look bad. And they've got the privilege of access to the media -- note who gets the majority of the quotes in this and other mainstream articles on the subject.

The article closes with several paragraphs of half-hearted breast-beating by the racists in question:

"I hope we can teach our children a lesson -- that you should admit errors. We should have done things differently. And if there are differences, we can overcome them."

She again denied the claims of racism and expressed hope of reaching a resolution.

"I wish we had come up with better solutions. I wish we had it to do all over again," she said.

How about, instead of wishing you could have a do-over in which to behave better, START BEHAVING BETTER NOW?

What would they do, if they did it all over again? Why can't they start doing that now?

What would an ideal response be, when an institution is faced with its own racism? Wait, let me ask a different question, because we're so far away from the ideal that I don't think we can visualize it. What would a better response be?

Instead of denying racism, how about owning up to it? We pretend to have a zero-tolerance policy for racism in our culture, but it's an illusion. Instead of actually refusing to tolerate racism, what we do is castigate the obvious offenders and then deny that any of the rest of it exists.

Because if we admitted it was there, we'd have to do something about it.

What would doing something about it look like? If the swim club actually wants to admit errors, do things differently, overcome differences, come up with a better solution -- what should they do? In the thousands of similar-but-less-blatant examples we've all seen and participated in, what should we do?

We must start by actually admitting our error and apologising: What we did was wrong, and it was racist. What we did was inexcusable. We apologise.

We must start to overcome differences by stopping the differential treatment. We should promise: We will never again privilege the prejudice of a member of our organization over the dignity of another human being. And then we should actually live up to that.

We must not accept racism in our lives, our organizations, our homes. We must label racism unacceptable and then LIVE THAT. We must work to recognize racism in our lives (because if we're not the victims of it, it doesn't come looking for us; it's only obvious to its victims, and even then, only sometimes). Our friends must be put on notice: if your words or actions are racist, I will not be your friend. As members of organizations we must know that if we speak or act like a racist, we will be ejected. As people who run those organizations, we must have the will and commitment to refuse to tolerate racism, even if that means ejecting members of our organization or kicking paying customers out of our spaces.

The better solution to recognizing racism within our own organizations is to ROOT IT OUT. The people in that club who made those racists comments, are they still members of that club? WHY??? Why should anybody who's willing to humiliate children over the color of their skin have the privilege of using your goddamn pool? Why does swim club director John Duesler still have a job?

And finally, they should be having these conversations with each other and with the people they hurt -- not with the media. Because if you're so damn concerned with saving face after you've humiliated someone else, you're never going to actually fix anything; all you're doing is defending your own damn privilege.

Comments

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

The problem with de-friending and ejecting people for saying or doing racist things is that we all do--it is inherent in the culture we live in. So you'll pretty much end up with no friends.

I think one problem with the word "racist" is that it covers a wide range of stuff--too wide a range to be useful sometimes. Intentional racism, grounded in a conscious belief of superiority. And unintentional racism, which we all participate in.

Also, as white people of privilege, we are particularly suited to talking to other white people of privilege about it, to move us all along in the right direction. Not talking to people, shunning them, isn't the best way to get the point across except in the most egregious situations. Even then, it's more a matter of what you can gather the strength to face, I think.

The club clearly needs a new board, and new management, drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds in the community. If someone on their board had the will and the intelligence to ask for a meeting with the day care management and parents, and the community,in which they did a full mea culpa and asked for help in moving toward better inclusiveness, they'd have had a chance.

[sev]

"The problem with de-friending and ejecting people for saying or doing racist things is that we all do--it is inherent in the culture we live in. So you'll pretty much end up with no friends."

If lots of people did it, instead, people would stop saying and doing racist things, and it would no longer be the culture we live in.

Otherwise, do we achieve a culture in which that isn't inherent? I am part of my culture. If I want the culture to stop accepting it, I have to stop accepting it. And so do a lot of other people. Not wait around for it to "get fixed" so we can leap onto the bandwagon. Right now we're in a place where we all point fingers and say "bad!" at the egregious examples, and then use that as a ruler: as long as we're not that obvious, we're not as bad. Everybody does it. Look, we're normal.

I want people to understand that that's TOTALLY BROKEN. This whole ugly hierarchy of oppression is propped up by normalization of unconscious bias. (see: rape culture, for the parallel argument in feminism)

I do talk to white people of privilege about racism. Talking is insufficient, unless I'm talking to someone who has already signed on to the "no tolerance" policy and actually walks that walk. (in which case, calling each other on it when we expose our own bias, and accepting the criticism when someone else calls us on it, is just part of walking the walk.)

As long as the consequences for tolerating racism are lower than the consequences for stopping it are, it's just going to keep happening. As long as people keep being friends with racists, and racists keep getting to keep their privileges even in the face of their unconscious bias resulting in the humiliation of other human beings, people aren't going to be willing to do the hard work and introspection it takes to root out their own internalized racism.

My goal is to make living as an unconscious racist more uncomfortable than facing one's own unconscious racism.

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

I think active engagement is better and more productive. Your stance is frighteningly similar to the conservative stance on international relations. The phrase "thought crime" keeps popping into my head.

[sev]

How much "active engagement" do you do before it's just wasting time? I have found that talk works fine for initial consciousness-raising, but if talk is all there is, nobody actually changes their behavior.

I expect more. Not ask for more, not hope for more. I *know* we can be more.

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

We can do much better, absolutely. But I think the cognitive side of this sort of deep cultural shift hasn't gotten enough attention. Some people are better able to adapt to new cultural expectations and behaviors than others. I think some people who are good at it have an unfortunate tendency to look at people who don't do it well as lacking morally, when the shift is one with a strong moral component, as this is. But if you look at people who have moved from one culture to another, you will see that some people just have a greater capacity for changing and adapting to a new culture, while others struggle, and some just can't. So, we can set frameworks in place to give parameters for people's *actions*. But it doesn't make any more sense to deride someone for having a hard time making a cognitive shift of this magnitude than it does to make fun of someone who struggles to learn a new language, who may never be able to speak it fluently.

I think a lot more work needs to be done in this area, god knows I'm not trained in it. But that's how it looks to me.

[sev]

How many generations of people have to be disenfranchised while White people sit and dither instead of behaving like decent human beings?

My problem is that I hear people using the same arguments you're using to excuse sitting around doing *nothing* while other people do real harm, because making the harm *stop* would result in somebody getting angry. That is, somebody other than the person to whom the harm is happening.

I am sick and tired of valuing White people's delicate sensibilities above the basic dignity of people of color.

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm certainly not saying we do that. I'm saying make the changes, but also have understanding for the people who will be caught in the gears of the cultural shift. IE not shunning them, keeping the door open. Whether they can or will walk through the door will be up to them. So, in the case of the club with the pool, work to change the board, change the management, but don't tell people you deem racist they can't use the club anymore. Make sure no one gets to treat other people disrespectfully while using the facility. What they say in their own space, or believe politically, that's up to them.

None of this will be tidy. There's always a big mess, and specific circumstances to consider, as Judge Sotomayor has been telling the Senate all week.

[sev]

... those people *did* treat other people disrespectfully while using the facility. And what happened? The kids got kicked out, and the people who made the racist comments didn't.

This is not an educational opportunity. This is people who don't ever have to examine their bigotry because there are insufficient consequences for them being assholes.

[pipyn.livejournal.com]

sev, of course that's what happened, and it absolutely shouldn't have. But if the board and management were on the ball, they could have dealt with it all better. What I'm responding to is your original post, which seems to argue that if anyone ever makes a bigoted comment they should be kicked out of the club for good. I'm saying they can be asked to correct their behavior in the moment, and if they can abide by those rules, they are free to stay and use the facilities. This is how it's handled every day at the homeless youth agency I'm involved with. The open door part is very important. If your behavior is respectful while here, you can be here. This gives incentive for people to stay engaged and have an opportunity to learn a new way to be, around people they would otherwise not associate with.

You need both positive feedback and clear boundaries to effectively change behavior, as tempting as punitive consequences can be.

[sev]

I'm saying that these things happen because people expect that they can always get another warning, that if they say "oops, didn't mean it!" they can get away with doing it again and again. If your organization is one of the rare magic few that's different, good for you. Those places are rare to the point of nonexistence in my experience.

I'm drawing a line. I don't mean that we should shoot somebody the moment they make a thoughtless comment. I do mean that if someone I deal with makes a racist comment, they back down and apologise as soon as they're called on it. And then they should not repeat the behavior, not tomorrow, not next year. If they claim they weren't being racist or they get defensive or they say nobody should be upset or they make some kind of excuse, that's unacceptable to me.

Without teeth, the rules are just wishful thinking.

People of color know they move through mainstream (white) culture at risk of being thrown out on a whim. They can't count on getting the benefit of the doubt. They don't get extra chances, even after all they did wrong was be in the wrong place as a person of color, look at the wrong person, whatever.

And they are rightfully very angry that we sit around giving each other chance after chance after chance to try to learn how to behave ourselves even after we discriminate against and humiliate them. We get so many chances, we don't even notice most of them coming our way; we take them for granted. We will keep taking them for granted until it becomes much more common for people to have actual, real live consequences for bigotry. Not just the passing embarrassment of having it pointed out.