exercise in noticing #1

A problem with consciousness-raising these days is that bias has largely gone underground. It's not enough for me to open my eyes and realize that racism is bad. My own position of privilege means that it's damn hard for me to notice it when I'm the beneficiary, not the target.

So, in the spirit of Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, I'm coming up with exercises that aid in noticing the things that we take for granted that systematically confer dominance and unearned entitlement on some groups and disempower others. (The "embedded forms," if I understand McIntosh's vocabulary correctly.)

Over time, I'd like to come up with more of these, so I'm calling this one #1. What I'd really like is some kind of pithy title for it, but I'm putting that off 'till I've got more of them. I'd hate to fall in love with a pithy title and then discover that the topic I've fixated on is a whole subject, not a single exercise. (the dominant culture strategically positioned as normative, take two! take three! take four!)

Anyway. This exercise comes in two parts.

Part one: Start noticing and mentioning cases in which an person's membership in a marginalized group is unnecessarily called out or otherwise made an issue. When a media piece wastes time commenting on a politican's hemline or cookie-baking skills instead of her policies. When someone gets interviewed about what it's like to be a person of color or a woman in [career-of-choice]. When 'female' or 'black' or [insert-race-here] or 'disabled' is used as a gratuitous adjective in a news article that has nothing to do with being female, a person of color, or disabled. "Look, a gratuitious reference to a marginalized group."

Ideally, do that, consciously and carefully, for a week, before you come back and read the rest of the exercise. In particular, don't just sit there and think back on last week and just say, gee, I think I might have noticed that once or twice. We're examining things that people take for granted, so it doesn't work unless you're willing to commit up-front to paying attention. Remind yourself of that commitment every time you turn the page of a newspaper or click on a link in your web browser or turn on the televeision.

Extra credit: Compare the frequency and tone of these references in your usual sources to those you don't normally read. How does the New York Times compare with the Irish Independant or with Fox News?





My conclusion, after doing this part of the exercise: We've come a long way, but we're not there yet. Even in the last five years, phrases like "woman engineer" and "black politician" are sounding more and more dated. But examples still stand out -- why, for instance, in articles about liberals arguing with conservatives, does Anne Coulter get called out as a "conservative female author"? Why all the references to whether she's wearing a short skirt? Conservative is on-point, yes, but her gender and wardrobe are thoroughly irrelevant (and in all the offending articles, no-one else's gender or wardrobe was mentioned). This is going to ramp up as we approach november senate elections in the US; I'm *already* frustrated hearing about Katherine Harris's hemlines, and do you remember how much fuss people made about Teresa Heinz Kerry's hair, a couple of years ago, or Hilary Clinton's cookies, an election before that? How often does the media go on about male politician's clothing, hair, or baking skills?

The media calling out femininity encourages the assumption that the masculine is the default, and that the feminine is something weird enough to warrant calling out. Similarly, whiteness and able-bodiedness are normative and deviations are something that gets commented-on.


Which leads to step two: Spend the same amount of time calling out the dominant culture, as if it was something unusual.

See how long it takes to get tired of saying, "look! white guys!"