Will the Voice Of Authority puh-leeeeeze change?

**Warning: some slight Doctor Who spoilers, up to the end of Season Three.**

It’s only taken about four years, but I’m finally catching up with Doctor Who. In (very) general terms, the newest iteration of the classic sci-fi series is really making me happy: fast-paced, witty dialogue cavorting along, effortlessly charming the viewer into following, especially in the David Tennant years. I’m now at the end of Season 3, and in spite of some minor details, I am actually quite pleased with the treatment of gender in the show. Both Rose and Martha are intelligent individuals with quite different personalities (not just a cookie-cutter “here’s your female companion”); both are a joy to watch, in spite of the occasionally typical infatuation story lines. Riffs on Captain Jack’s ‘pansexuality’ are entertaining, well-timed, and are treated at times with just enough gravity that the humor in it turns on humanity, rather than some caricature of homosexuality.

But seriously, people. Time Lords are supposed to be* the most intelligent beings in the multiverse, with impressive talents and access to advanced technology. So why is it, in all the possibilities in all the possible worlds, that ALL of the Time Lords are white men?

The easy answer is: we live in a society in which white + male is seen as the default. One could go so far as to say they are the only people who are consistently treated as full human beings. But seriously, O Writers of Science Fiction: How is it that in imagining myriad variety to existence, this old trope keeps popping up?

The Doctor is, in many ways, the embodiment of Male Privilege. He walks into situations with absolute confidence in his ability to fix it, even when he does not know how he’ll do it, or even what the situation is. He does not identify himself to the satisfaction of those who question his authority. He completely ignores many challenges to that authority. He speaks; everyone else (eventually) listens. In one episode, The Doctor must make himself human to escape his adversary, including suppressing all consciousness of ever being a Time Lord. His character is still the same embodiment of privilege, if in a slightly more day-dreaming, less self-confident package. His human persona is a professor at a boys’ school, a position of authority over lesser (in this case, younger) beings. His position has not changed much at all, even if his species has. All his behavior is, of course, treated as Right and Good, as though we silly humans should know our betters when we see them, and when we don’t, we’re chuckled at for the buffoons we are.

Members of the Time Lords’ species have the ability to regenerate their bodies when those bodies are damaged, and those bodies are ostensibly have completely different skeletons (“new teeth”) and muscular systems (“new voice”). Everything about each regenerated Time Lord is new, except his gender and skin color. If his entire body changes, why in the world wouldn’t his skin color change too? There is likely some theoretical* reason why biological sex (and, by extension, gender) is immutable in a Time Lord, but if The Doctor is going to be consistently male and functionally heterosexual (as evidenced by the constant line of female companions), then Time Lords are clearly not unilaterally asexual or non-gendered beings. Biological sex exists; gender presentation does too. So why lack the creativity to play around with those very basic human traits? Why insist on every Doctor (and Master, don’t forget!) being Male and White?

The good Doctor has only one regeneration left, if Wikipedia is to be believed. How about something slightly different for a change? The role requires a British actor; Britain isn’t just made up of the native Gauls and Norman French anymore. How about letting the next person to play The Doctor to be of Indian or Pakistani descent, or descended from immigrants from anywhere else in the world? How about letting the Doctor be a woman for once? The Voice of Authority is virtually always the old (white) man in western social reality. Why does some of our most creative fiction have to fixate on that too?

==x-posted at The Geek Side==
*Read: bullshit

The oh-shit-I-forgot-to-blog blogaround!

Well, it’s been several days since I’ve written, hasn’t it! Uh… oops?

My classes are rapidly progressing towards their ends, meaning I have lots of projects and impending exams. Since Tuesday I’ve been working on a 10-minute video for my Arabic class, which is due next Tuesday. It’s a group project, and while our script would have been simple as pie to film with a group of dedicated, experienced film students, and at least fairly doable with a group invested in working efficiently, it is, perhaps, over-ambitious for a group unwilling to commit to a production schedule. My time is occupied entirely with, for example, rearranging my entire day to accommodate one group member, whose only area of opportunity is 10:20am on Friday, only to discover at 10:25 that she has to go to class at 10:30. And then there is the group member who told me simply that she was never available at all, except that she did so by saying “well, Thursday is pretty busy, and Friday is iffy, Saturday is right out and so is Sunday, and then Monday I think I have something…”

I also, miraculously, film something on occasion, and even have brief opportunities to edit that footage. So far we have 2 minutes of our required 10, and while much of it is chronological it’s still pretty scattershot.

But I promised a blogaround! So here you go! Links! Which I have either tagged as “toblog” on del.icio.us or chosen to “share” on Google Reader! Have at it!

From The Angry Black Woman, we have “A Chocolate Coating to make the Bitter White Pill Go Down Easier,” a great article about how turning all the main characters white in the movie version of Avatar: The Last Airbender and then making some of the random background characters a mish-mash of “multicultural” races is still made of fail compared to maintaining the Asian culture of the show without adding white people or black people.

 

So in the name of diversity, the film’s producers are ignoring the diversity that was in the original cartoon — characters who evoked cultures as wildly disparate as the Inuit, Mayans, Indians, Koreans, Chinese, Pacific Islanders, Arabs, Japanese, Tibetan, Ainu, and probably a dozen more. They’re replacing it with “Diversity: American Style”, in which all those ethnicities get lumped together into “one community” and stripped of agency, a few black and multiracial people get sprinkled on for flavor, and white people get the best parts and the most screentime.

I cannot begin to explain how revolted I am that black people are being used to justify this shit.

…

Because that’s the thing: there weren’t any white people in the original series, either. And clearly the producers were not OK with this, despite the many, many all-white fantasy worlds that already exist. So all their “diversity” bullshit is really just a cover for their primary goal, which was to shoehorn white people into this world. But the creepiness of this goal would’ve been far too obvious if they’d only inserted white folks, so they tossed in some other races too.

 

—

From Junkfood Science, we have “How we’ve come to believe that overeating causes obesity,” a fascinating historical account. 

… [P]eople, regardless of their size, who believe they have “overeating” issues are most often exhibiting completely normal, natural biological responses to starvation, hunger and weight loss — in developed countries, that means voluntary starvation, otherwise called dieting. Healthy people, whether naturally fat or thin, who aren’t dieting or trying to control their weights don’t have problems with “overeating.”

The biological reality of our weights and weight control, and the effects of dieting, were clinically demonstrated more than 50 years ago in what remains the definitive research on the subject. The findings in this famous study, revolutionary at the time, have been replicated in the most precise, complicated metabolic studies of food intake behavior, energy expenditure and the biochemistry of fat conducted by the country’s top obesity researchers.

[a huge portion of the post is omitted here, detailing the study and its implications. Read it in full here.]

The last part of the Minnesota Starvation Study revealed perhaps the most important effects. When the men were allowed to eat ad libitum again, they had insatiable appetites, yet never felt full. …

While it seemed the men were “overeating,” Dr. Keys discovered that their bodies actually needed inordinate amount of calories for their tissues to be rebuilt:

Our experiments have shown that in an adult man no appreciable rehabilitation can take place on a diet of 2,000 calories a day. The proper level is more like 4,000 kcal daily for some months. The character of the rehabilitation diet is important also, but unless calories are abundant, then extra proteins, vitamins and minerals are of little value.

In other words, they weren’t really “overeating,” it was a biological, normal effect of hunger and weight loss. The men regained their original weights plus 10%. The regained weight was disproportionally fat, and their lean body mass recovered much more slowly. With unlimited food and unrestricted eating, their weights plateaued and finally, about 9 months later, most had naturally returned to their initial weights without trying — giving scientists one of the first demonstrations that each body has a natural, genetic set point, whether it be fat or thin. Despite the fear that with unrestrained eating everyone would continue to grow larger, it isn’t true.

—

From The F-Word, “Why does the world love Susan Boyle?” I’ll skip to the part where she tells us why, because it’s awesome:

 

The world has responded fervently to Susan Boyle because we are all Susan Boyle. Her choice of songs — “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables — is not to be dismissed. We were once all “young and unafraid” with high hopes and lofty aspirations yet unsullied by a cruel and superficial world.  We’ve all experienced those metaphorical “tigers” that have torn apart our hopes and turned our dreams to shame. For an unfortunate too many of us, life has killed the dreams we dreamed. Yet when we listen to Susan Boyle, for a moment we are Susan Boyle, standing before a jaded, image-obsessed audience in a bad dress and clunky shoes, and yet being embraced anyway with open arms and accolades.  As Susan said of her childhood harassers, “Look at me now – I’ve got the last laugh.”  And as she laughs, we laugh, for Susan Boyle’s vindication is our vindication.

But the world doesn’t love Susan Boyle because she represents the common Everyman. The world loves Susan Boyle because she stepped onto that stage in front of a cynical public and the white-hot crucible of reality TV and she did it with the kind of unwavering dignity and extraordinary confidence in her self-worth and awesome talent that so many of us only wish we had.

—

And, finally, from Language Log we have “Debasing the coinage of rational inquiry: a case study.“

 

A little more than a week ago, our mass media warned us about a serious peril. “Scientists warn of Twitter dangers“, said CNN on 4/14/2009:

Rapid-fire TV news bulletins or getting updates via social-networking tools such as Twitter could numb our sense of morality and make us indifferent to human suffering, scientists say.

New findings show that the streams of information provided by social networking sites are too fast for the brain’s “moral compass” to process and could harm young people’s emotional development.

…

As usual when stuff that people like is shown to be bad for them, the public apparently discounted these dire warnings. According to a poll reported at the Marketing Shift blog, when asked “Do social networks and rapid updates desensitize you to sad news?”, 74% said “no”, 13% said “maybe”, and only 13% said “yes”.

In this case, the public skepticism was a good thing, because the news reports were a load of hooey.

The timing of streams of information did indeed cause some public immorality in this case — but the guilty party was not Twitter or Facebook or TV News, but rather the National Academy of Sciences, in whose Proceedings the cited reseach was published. In accord with its usual practice, PNAS released the embargo for journalists a full week before the paper was available for other scientists and the general public to read. As a result, the news media could spread nonsense-pretending-to-be-science (almost) unchallenged for seven of those famous 24-hour news cycles.

And “nonsense” is far too mild a word for the way these stories described the research of Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Andrea McColl, Hanna Damasio and Antonio Damasio, “Neural correlates of admiration and compassion“, PNAS, published online April 20, 2009.  I haven’t seen such a spectacular divergence between evidence and science journalism since the infamous “email and texting lower the IQ twice as much as smoking pot” case of 2005.

—

So, there you go. Four meaty posts that probably deserve in-depth responses, but, well, better something than nothing, eh? Look for more fascinating links in the coming days as I continue to be ridiculously busy! And leave your own in the comments!

Quick Hit: Matthew Perry on Letterman

Or: Let’s see how many people we can Other with “humor” in under five minutes.

A lovely instance of White Librul Dood values — at least, what they’re willing to participate in on national television. For those of you who want to save your stomachs and not watch*, in the first four and a half minutes of the interview, Perry makes jokes** with a trifecta of punchlines: misogyny! racism! and homophobia! (Oh, my side, it hurts from laughing. Har, har.)

He starts out with this gem. It’s nearly the first thing he says.

Perry: She [Kudrow] doesn’t return my calls anymore, but there’s a certain section of road right by her house that if you park your car at the right time, you can see right into her window.

[audience laughs]

Letterman: Can you give the coordinates on that a little later?

Perry: Absolutely—during the break!

[uproarious laughter from audience]

Followed by this, a bit later in the interview:

Perry: I started to think, okay, [M. Night Shyamalan] really likes me… no no no not…

[laughter from audience]

Perry: … I actually didn’t mean it that way.

and

Perry: I realize, the whole time—it’s not M. Night Shyamalan. It’s just an Indian guy.

[uproarious laughter]

Letterman: [laughing a bit uncomfortably] Wow. I don’t know what to say about that.

I simply ADORE the fact that Letterman plays into the stalking schtick with good humor, chuckles at the homophobic comment, but looks “uncomfortable” at the racism. Oh my, we can’t be seen being politically incorrect, can we? Getting caught at racism, or being complicit with racism***, that’s a no-no. But don’t forget, it’s not a good Librul White Dood setup without some misogyny thrown in, because stalking is always good fun, and we have to assure folks that we are Not Teh Gay!!!1eleventy!

But what do I know about funny? I’m just a humorless feminist.

h/t (and a couple transcript sections stolen from) Shakesville

---

* Or, you know, when the video goes away from YouTube.
** They must be jokes. People were laughing. One must assume they were funny.
*** This is not the Oppression Olympics. I think it’s telling that, of all the bad things to do, racism is the only thing that Letterman looks (or sounds, when he’s off-camera) uncertain about. It’s more the reaction of a kid who doesn’t mind doing something naughty; he just doesn’t want to get caught.

Of “bint” and “madrasa”

I’m currently in my second year of Arabic, which has been an entirely fascinating and enjoyable endeavor, but which has made certain kinds of racism absolutely jump out at me in ways I’d never experienced before. There was my awkward experience getting my hair cut, for one, but most of it has to do with words.

For example, one of the very first words I learned in Arabic was “bint.” It just means daughter, or, by extension, girl. It’s a wholly unremarkable word. However, I hear it used as an insult, and whereas before I’m not sure I would even have noticed, I find it almost painful now.

The origin of the word as an English derogatory term apparently comes from the British occupation of Egypt. That is to say, English-speakers interacting with Arabic-speakers. Who took an Arabic word unchanged and applied it as an insult, despite the fact that there’s nothing derogatory about being a “bint,” except that it probably means one speaks Arabic. Because of this, I posit that “bint” as a derogatory is an inherently racist usage.

I have also heard it suggested that the word is really a portmanteu of “bitch” and “cunt.” I’m not totally convinced that’s a lot better, but regardless, I think it’s a sort of “folk etymology,” which often happens when a word is in use but no one remembers the original origin; people make up a new one, and pass that along. (A little like a backronym.) The historical usage of the word, according to my research, points much more strongly to an Arabic origin.

So, this is actually a pretty simple example, for me: when I see someone using “bint” in a derogatory manner, I alert them to its origin and racist connotations and ask they they refrain from using it. But it’s not the only use of Arabic that I find problematic.

My big question right now surrounds the word “madrasa.” It means a place for things that are studied, just like “maktaba” means a place for things that are written. All words in Arabic are created by putting three root letters into patterns to create words. The root K-T-B has to do with writing, so kitab means “book” (thing that is written), katabtu means “I wrote” and maktaba means “library” or “bookstore” (place for things that are written). The root D-R-S refers to studying and learning, so that dirasa means “studies” (thing that is studied, like “women’s studies”), darastu means “I studied,” and madrasa means, well, “place for things that are studied.” My translations are loose and my transliterations looser, but the point should be clear: “madrasa” really just means “school.”

So why does, for example, this story still say madrasa instead of translating it to school?

They gathered in front of the School of the Last Prophet, a madrasa run by Ayatollah Asif Mohsini, the country’s most powerful Shiite cleric.

I really don’t know. They translate it when they say the name, “School of the Last Prophet,” but not elsewhere in the story. News stories do this all the time. It stands out to me as weirdly inconsistent. It seems especially unnecessary in this particular sentence. Even if the reporter was unaware that madrasa has no religious connotations in Arabic (which is quite possible!), and therefore chose the word in an attempt to convey that this school did have religious ties (the way we might refer to a “parochial school” in the U.S.), the rest of the sentence already tells us the school’s religious affiliations.

The charitable interpretation is that the reporter believed (erroneously, but in good faith) that a madrasa was, somehow, a kind of school, and was simply trying to be as accurate as possible.

The less charitable interpretation chalks it up to good ol’ racism, conscious or (more likely) subconscious. I think that in English, “madrasa” carries connotations not just of “school” but specifically of “schools where those scary extremist Arabs learn their scary extremist Islam.” A reporter choosing “madrasa” over “school” emphasizes that aspect of the story. It’s an Othering technique, and, I think, almost something of a dog whistle.

But how racist is it? Should I be calling people out on it, explaining that the word really doesn’t mean anything but “school”? For example, in this post at Shakesville, Liss calls the school a madrasa (probably taking her cue from the article.) I’m pretty sure in her case it stems entirely from unawareness that the word doesn’t mean anything special, but I still hesitate to say anything. I’m not Muslim or an Arab; I haven’t even been studying Arabic for so long. Who am I to go on a crusade here? Is the offense really large enough that it needs calling out at every appearance?

With “bint,” the answer is easily yes. With “madrasa,” I’m not so sure. It’s more of a dogwhistle than an actual racial epithet. But it still has unfortunate connotations.

Any readers more qualified than myself have an opinion? I’d love some insight from someone whom this affects more directly.

Thinking by analogy

I want to direct everybody towards “A Person Paper on Purity in Language,” by Douglas Hofstadter, which I’ve read several times now, and never ceases to impress me with its relevance, even though it was written in 1985. It begins thus:

It’s high time someone blew the whistle on all the silly prattle about revamping our language to suit the purposes of certain political fanatics. You know what I’m talking about-those who accuse speakers of English of what they call “racism.” This awkward neologism, constructed by analogy with the well-established term “sexism,” does not sit well in the ears, if I may mix my metaphors. But let us grant that in our society there may be injustices here and there in the treatment of either race from time to time, and let us even grant these people their terms “racism” and “racist.” How valid, however, are the claims of the self-proclaimed “black libbers,” or “negrists”-those who would radically change our language in order to “liberate” us poor dupes from its supposed racist bias?

Most of the clamor,as you certainly know by now, revolves around the age-old usage of the noun “white” and words built from it, such as chairwhite, mailwhite, repairwhite, clergywhite, middlewhite, Frenchwhite, forewhite, whitepower, whiteslaughter, oneupuwhiteship, straw white, whitehandle, and so on. The negrists claim that using the word “white,” either on its own or as a component, to talk about all the members of the human species is somehow degrading to blacks and reinforces racism. Therefore the libbers propose that we substitute “person” everywhere where “white” now occurs. Sensitive speakers of our secretary tongue of course find this preposterous. There is great beauty to a phrase such as “All whites are created equal.” Our forebosses who framed the Declaration of Independence well understood the poetry of our language. Think how ugly it would be to say “All persons are created equal,” or “All whites and blacks are created equal.” Besides, as any schoolwhitey can tell you, such phrases are redundant. In most contexts, it is self-evident when “white” is being used in an inclusive sense, in which case it subsumes members of the darker race just as much as fairskins.

It’s a bit long, but I strongly recommend reading the whole thing. The metaphor only grows more powerful, covering the use of gendered pronouns, and “Mrs” and “Miss” for women but only “Mr” for men, and changing one’s name upon marriage, and the tendency to refer to adult women as “girls,” and more! Here, have a second link to it!

Now I’m linking this not only because I think it’s well-written (and especially useful as an eye-opener for those who don’t think sexist language is important), but also because I’ve been thinking a lot about the uses of analogies to highlight systematic problems. When I posted about environmentalism earlier, for example, I frequently used analogies to the feminist movement to articulate my thoughts about the environmental movement. To quote myself:

I don’t want to fall into the “WHAT ABOUT WOMEN IN SAUDI ARABIA” sort of argument that feminists face when they try to talk about comic books– I get that talking about the little things does not preclude talking about the big things, and that it’s important to pay attention on both.  But this seems somehow… not even one of the little things. As if a feminist was trying to complain about women no longer being put on a pedestal. It’s missing the point, somehow, aiming for a goal other than the one that out society needs.

I was trying to articulate that I didn’t object to the innovations in question merely because they were small, but because I thought they were missing the point entirely; any sustainable action, no matter how small, would be worthwhile, but something selling itself as “green!” that didn’t work towards sustainability would be problematic. I was having trouble expressing that idea, though, since I am not as well-versed in environmental issues, so I went back to something I did understand, and which I thought my readers would be more likely to understand, and tried to reason from there. I wasn’t totally successful (the comments were a hoot!) but that was my goal, and my reasoning behind using the feminist movement as an analogy.

I find that I also try to work from my feminist framework to understand other “isms” which I do not directly experience. But this is where I start checking myself. I truly do think that thinking by analogy can be enlightening and not appropriation, and the article I began with is an example of a usage I find acceptable. But I could be totally, totally off base. There are definitely example of “analogies” being drawn between oppressions (especially using the black civil rights movement!) that are not acceptable. For example: Gay is the new Black!

The biggest flaw that I can identify in usages like this is the way that they pretend the black civil rights movement is over, which is a bit of a lol/sob situation. Barack Obama did not end racism! Seriously! I may still have some embarrassingly obvious moments where my privilege is showing (like, possibly, this post!), but at least I don’t try to pretend I don’t have privilege. Any attempts to draw parallels between the black civil rights movement and any subsequent civil rights movement is going to be fatally flawed (and probably worthless) if it doesn’t accommodate the fact that we’re not done yet.

But even more importantly, even though all oppression is connected, all oppression is not the same. The analogies break down when you get into the details. Using analogies like the ones I’ve mentioned earlier might be useful as an introduction to one’s privilege, but they have to be replaced with an actual understanding of the topic at hand for the conversation to go farther. Trying to only think via analogy can be seriously harmful.

Does the essay I started with fall into that category? I’m not sure. It’s definitely working from the assumption that “we all know that Racism Is Bad,” but I’m not sure that it’s positing that racism is gone. I’m not sure that saying “we all know Racism Is Bad” is the same as saying “racism is fixed now”– in fact, my impression is that one of the problems with eradicating racism is that We All Know Racism Is Bad, and therefore any attempt to say “that was pretty racist” gets translated to “you are A Racist, and therefore Evil!” and shuts down the conversation. So my first response is that the essay is OK on that level, but what about the fact that some of the instances it uses– especially gendered pronouns– were not oppressions that (male) people of color faced? Is that minimizing the ways they they were (and are!) oppressed, making it look like sexism is somehow worse or more widespread? Are we getting into an Oppression Olympics here? (The first half of the link is more relevant, though the whole thing is good.) But the whole point is revealing that they are oppressive acts, by applying them along race lines instead of sex lines, to trigger our Racism Is Bad response. This particular essay isn’t trying to say anything about racial oppression; it’s assuming we already know how it happens. Maybe. Is it only my privilege that makes an essay that relies so much on race-related language seem to somehow be “not about race” to me?

I guess my big question is, when is thinking via analogy helpful, and when is it hurtful? Is it ever all one or the other?

My gut response is that of course you have to engage directly with the voices in question to get to the actual paradigm shift, the real understanding. But, however easy it is for an analogy to be misguided and hurtful, there are exceptions, and it can be a good way to start things, by forcing people to realize that their paradigm isn’t quite right.

But, of course, I could be way off base. What do you think?

My mother is an immigrant!!

Okay, so this post at Shakesville has prompted the weirdest epiphany ever: my mother is an immigrant.

My mum was born and raised in Canada, and she moved to the U.S. in the 80s to study Computer Science. She has acquired U.S. citizenship, but her original citizenship is Canadian. Which makes her an immigrant, obviously.

So why have I never heard her, or anyone else like her, called an immigrant?

I already know the answer to that question. It’s because she’s a Canadian immigrant, meaning she’s a white lady with a pleasant English accent, and it’s because she’s not doing immigrant work, and is instead a professor (and now Department Head), meaning she already had money when she got here. So, you know, she’s not one those immigrants.

Good thing Barack Obama has eliminated all racism! (And classism, I guess, since that’s at play here, too!) Isn’t our post-racial, economically-equal society wonderful?

The oh-god-I-hate-the-flu blogaround!

Here are some things that have been sitting in my RSS feed reader unread because my I am so ill even my brain aches! I have skimmed them, and declare them to be time-worthy! Read them, and be enlightened! Apparently, a little-known symptom of the flu is over-use of exclamation marks!

!!!

Anyway, here you go!

From Shakesville, That’s Entertainment! I saw this a while ago and was going to blog it, but somehow life kept getting in the way.

From Sociologial Images, Racism in Identity Theft Advertising.

Two quick hits from reaching the shore: Tell it WOC Speak: Hear Us Roar and A Day in the Life od Abbey Road.

From Bitch, Ph.D., Cover your ears, boys.

From The Hathor Legacy, Worst Commercials of the Week and Asian Women Blog Carnival. Also from Hathor: this review of Coraline, which I refuse to read until I see the movie. Any day now! I’ll have the time! I will!

From Women & Hollywood, Glenn Close on Women & Power.

Also, if you know of more blogs that I ought to be following, my goal is to subscribe to 75 blogs via RSS… I’ll never go hungry (for blogs) again!

Internet Musings: Economic Class and Class Mobility

Welcome to what’s turning out to be a series:  Gender Goggles IM conversations.  Clearly thirsty for intense feminist real-time discourse, Eloriane and I will tend to have these really great discussions (we’ll also chat about casual stuff, but we’re not going to show you those – much less interesting!).  So this post is a little bit of  the IM’ing that she and I were doing during my lunch break yesterday. What follows is a kind of thinking aloud/processing that ended up being about economic class and other oppressions, and how they might intersect. Both Eloriane and I recognize that we might be missing something in this discussion – we are, after all, both white. While she may have grown up with more economic privilege than I, I still feel somewhat new to the analysis of economic oppression. Airing our musings can be problematic as it will show everyone our blind spots, but I think it’s a really valuable exercise as a form of consciousness raising.

Crowfoot: I had been reading some monster thread somewhere and had noticed that several people didn’t seem to understand what “being socialized” meant – they didn’t seem to understand that it’s not something we can escape? That we’re bathed in our culture every day since birth and it forms our world view in a really basic sort of way. Which is not to say that we can’t teach ourselves new things, just that there isn’t anyone who grew up in this culture and hasn’t been affected by it.

Eloriane: Yeah, yeah. I mean, just last night my mom offered to write a guest post (to keep me from whining) about how the patriarchy totally doesn’t apply to her. And I wanted to say, yes it does, you’ve just made things work anyway.

E: She is an aggressive leader in a male-dominated field but she still spends all the time she wants with her kids and wears pretty clothes.

E: So, win!

C: heeh

E: Except… people always assume that the “Dr. Lastname” who is head is my dad, not her.

C: Right!

E: I mean, she has to INSIST upon “Dr.” instead of “Mrs.”

C: She may have overcome things, but it doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist in the first place.

E: Yeah!

E: And the people who haven’t sort of had their minds changed by her, will still think about her the same way. Like, she’s proven herself to her current faculty, but that doesn’t mean visitors don’t assume things.

C: Exactly.

E: And even the fact that she HAD to prove herself is meaningful.

E: I’m still crazy proud of her, though. She’s getting exactly what she wants out of her life. Like, she’s always spent a lot of time with my brothers and I, but she still gets to do really cool stuff at work.

C: And you should be proud and so should she.

E: But that’s kind of class privilege helping her out… we’ve always had someone working for us to do the cooking, cleaning, and household chores.

C: Ooooh. Indeed! Class privilege.

E: Like crazy!

E: But just because she has made it work doesn’t mean somehow she grew up in a different society.

C: Exactly! And as usual, money seems to solve a lot of problems for women :-/ (well, up to a point obviously)

E: Class privilege can compensate for most other forms of oppression…?

E: Like, historically, there have always been at least a few POC who get accepted into white society because of their insane wealth. But it doesn’t erase the racism, it just supersedes it.

C: Exactly!

C: Well, I meant that having money can help a woman escape an abusive situation, get a better education, be able to leave a toxic work environment etc. Though it doesn’t stop sexism in any way of course, or racism or homophobia.

E: I wonder why that is? Maybe because class is an even more constructed barrier…?

C: Why which is? We chatting over each other again! :p

E: It needs more reinforcement?

E: Oh, why class can supersedes other oppressions! Like, why you would accept someone you would usually exclude, based purely on their money?

C: With many accents not being tooo noticeable, it might be easier to move between economic classes?

E: I’m thinking of, like, Moorish traders in old Europe…

C: It’s an interesting question.

E: It doesn’t ultimately challenge white/male/straight superiority, because it’s still clear you’re only in because of your money. But it is interesting that the exception is made.

C: Do you think it supersedes other oppressions or rather… lubricates social interaction more so that the other oppressions can become easier to get around or evade (somewhat)?

E: That might be it?

E: It certainly avoids the more systemic ill effects– i.e., lack of resources. The stuff you mentioned, leaving abusive relationships, getting an education for your children, and so on.

C: It sounds like it ties into tokenism – ie a black lesbian might be accepted (sort of accepted?) if she has a lot of money because she’s proven that she’s different then “those other people” by having one thing that the Top Dogs in society have, money?

E: Maybe?

C: So having money is useful for personally navigating oppressions, but not revolutionary.

So what do you think? Is there something to what Eloriane and I were discussing? Moving between classes/groups is difficult, but with economic class it is the one group that’s not based or connected to a physical attribute. Except… whiteness? At least in the US/Canada/Northern Europe? Economic class is definitely completely socially constructed, as Eloriane pointed out, but I think there’s still genetic markers attached to it. As it gives rank to members of society in a white male supremacy that ranking gets associated with the ruling class: white people. So maybe this was a blind spot for us? That how wealth is coded as white wasn’t immediately apparent?

I think, too, that in Britain there is a physical marker of class: one’s accent. Even a super rich cockney is still from working class roots. New money and all that. While we have regional accents here in N. America it’s much less pronounced. But in Canada, like Britain, I don’t recall hearing anyone with a “regional” accent on the CBC or BBC. Everyone speaks either Toronto/Ottawa english or Queen’s english.

What do you think? Socialist Feminists speak up!

Betrayal?

Many years ago my family went on vacation several states away from where we lived. An incident occurred there that had devastating results for us. The town where this happened opened their hearts and pocket books to us, giving us a place to stay while some of us were in the hospital so we didn’t have to stay at a hotel, as well as paying for our airfare back home when it was all over. We made friends with some of the townsfolk then, friendships that lasted decades. Despite the tragedy that occurred, we continued to travel in the same direction, stopping in the town to visit our new friends.

One set of these friends moved to the deep south a few years back and as it was a bit farther from where we lived we weren’t able to visit very often. But that was ok, we still called and wrote letters. A few days ago my mother, K, was talking to her friend down in Georgia, and, perhaps wondering how much of the Southern stereotypes were true, asked her friend how they were feeling about their new president.

There was a long pause. “Well, we can’t all get what we want.”

My mom was not terribly surprised by this as she had suspected they tended to vote Republican. But our friend continued: “he is black, you know.”

Now K is taken aback. Taken off guard, she asks about the neighbourhood. Apparently a lot of people are pissed and the KKK is talking openly about finding out who in the town voted Democrat and “getting them.” Now my mother is really alarmed. “Really?” she asks, incredulously.

“Well, he is black.”

At this point it’s all sinking in and K, not knowing how to deal with this development, stutters about the doorbell and it was nice talking toyougottagonowbye.

When she told me this, I had to keep asking her about exactly what was said in that conversation. I kept asking her if she was sure that “well he is black” was spoken of when the friend was talking about her feelings, and not  those of her racist neighbours. But no, alas, that’s how it went down. As I write this I’m thinking that it might be surprising that we didn’t know they were this way. I guess we never talked about politics enough to know they were staunch Republicans? Certainly K wasn’t surprised that they voted for McCain, but I would imagine that if they never would have voted Democrat that that would have become evident over the decades that we’ve known them? My guess, as I interacted with them the most as a child and thus didn’t really talk about politics, is that they leaned toward conservative most of the time but were not dyed in the wool party faithfuls.

And certainly we were not aware of just how racist they were. This is, in large part, because we’re white. Duh. Certainly if we were black we would have found out earlier! As my mother and I were talking about this new information about them, both of us quite upset, my mom said “would they have helped us back then if we were black?”

And it hit me, this galling understanding that, no, they probably wouldn’t have. And the town likely wouldn’t have opened their hearts and pocketbooks and houses (literally) if we had been black. Emergency personnel would likely have done their jobs, yes, but probably that paramedic wouldn’t have let us stay in his house while he and his family went on vacation. But, maybe other people in the community would have helped us, but as it was a predominantly white town, that help would likely have been much smaller. I probably wouldn’t have met the mayor.

I know, I know, say hello to my white privilege! *declines shaking hands* Disgusted to meet you.

I found it interesting that the first emotion that I felt after hearing about this conversation was betrayal. Ok, first there was shock and dismay. But mostly betrayal. I think K and I feel betrayed by this revelation, even though we are not on the receiving end of this bigotry. Is that my white privilege showing itself again? Or is that us automatically seeing people of colour as like us, easily could be us, might as well be us, so that a friend’s betrayal of our (everyone’s) common humanity became a betrayal to us, even though we’re white? It’s just that betrayal seems a bit of an odd feeling to have, since they didn’t reject us/ignore us/leave us on the side of the road because of our race. But that they might have, if our biology were different, indicates a degree of seeing us as members of a certain class rather than just as people. And while being of the “right” class helped on this occasion, it is still ultimately not about just helping us as people. But about helping other white people.

The more I think about it the more appalled I get.

I’m not really sure, and I’m still trying to sort out what’s behind these feelings. I feel like I’m stumbling around in the dark somewhat – that there’s a dynamic that I’m missing or not explaining well. So I’m processing aloud, for all the world to see. I’m not attached to any of these feelings – meaning I have no problem in thinking that my response is connected to the problems of white supremacy itself; I’m not going to defend it. Maybe this is me being full of shit? Could be, and I’m willing to take the lumps for that and hopefully grow. I do think I’m leaning towards a both/and scenario. I think it is both my white privilege at work when someone’s racism feels like a betrayal to me, a white person (kind of like co-opting an oppression, in a weird way, if that makes sense). But I also think it’s a betrayal of our common humanity. If you feel differently, by all means feel free to tell me. I certainly don’t expect anyone to educate me about anti-racism, and I will continue to think about this and process it. I just want to make sure you knew that y’all are welcome to call me out on my shit. Hell, you’re always welcome to call me on my shit.

Calling It Out

While riding the bus today I did something I’ve been trying to make myself do more often: I called out someone for their racism. This particular woman was, as well as being racist, rather drunk and loud and obnoxious. Now, I’m generally loath to want women to be quiet – women so rarely get to be loud! I usually enjoy loud and proud women. And I’m not generally averse to swearing, being in large part a sailor myself. But this woman (and her companion, who was quieter) was really loud and swore very very much. She was just a big jerk, really. She kept saying “dirka dirka Mohamed jihad” (or something approaching this). I’m not even clear as to why she was saying it, there seemed little context. It looked like she just kept saying it because she thought it was funny. I had spent a good deal of the ride standing very close to her (not that that matters all that much as she was swearing so loudly and profusely that none of us on the bus could help but hear her) and as the bus gradually emptied I decided to move closer to the front. I walked quickly past her, and was not conscious of bumping into her at all, although it is possible that my backpack did brush her. She kept talking to her friend and then said (in an even louder voice) something about people being rude going past others without saying “excuse me.”

I don’t remember what my first words were. I don’t even remember if I acknowledged what she said to me or pointed out the irony of someone who is incredibly rude complaining about being brushed with a backpack. I think I started with asking her to please just stop saying that “dirka dirka” crap, that it’s racist and stop it. Her response? “What?? It’s from a movie! It’s from a movie!!” I wish that at the time I had responded with “And? The movie can’t be racist too? It being from a movie doesn’t mean it’s not racist.” I didn’t swear at her, but I did reiterate that what she was saying was racist. I wasn’t even angry about it, but rather, upset (I’m not saying that anger isn’t completely appropriate, just that I was stuck in nice mode). At that point the bus driver interjected and asked for quiet (he didn’t really ask me, but rather implied that he was talking to both of us). He said that he didn’t want to get in the middle of it, but that she had already been warned about her extreme language once before and he had already taken away her beer. One more need for comment by him and she was out. She was quiet after that.

An older fellow, kind of rough around the edges, came up to me a little later and asked if I knew which movie it was. I was trying to remember, knowing it had “America” in the title. The driver interjected that it was “Team America.” I haven’t seen it, but I do recall hearing about the middle-eastern characters and the “dirka dirka” business – I believe they were terrorists and that was what the writers thought would be a funny way to describe Arabic? Someone who has described this movie to me didn’t seem to think it was racist (or didn’t comment on it). But you know, it makes my stomach do this little unpleasant churning thing and I’m inclined to think that if I, a white person, suspect that something is racist, it probably is. When in doubt, call it out, right?

I told the older fellow that I could be wrong, ya know, but it feels racist to hear it, and if I call it out, at least then people will think about it. He replied “Yeah! I’m certainly thinking about it now.”

For those that have seen the film, what do you think? Racist? It seems to me that it’s likely not feeling racist to some because the characters were terrorists. Well, they may be bad guys, yes, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t racist to mock their religion – one of the world’s largest – and their language (their interpretation of that religion is a little different I think). Cuz, yanno, lots of Muslims and Arabs aren’t terrorists. How is it different than using sexist words to insult Anne Coulter? There’s a lot of things you can criticize Coulter for, dear god, but her sex isn’t one of them. Melissa McEwan of Shakesville has a great post about this. Well, lordy, she has several!

A lot of us have noticed this increase in equating Islam and Middle Eastern people with terrorism. Witness all the ZOMG Obama’s a Muslim!! hysteria (thank you, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, for speaking out publicly about this equation). This feels like more of the same to me. While the makers of Team America may not have wished to say all Arabs and/or Muslims are terrorists, by using the religion and race of the bad guys as the club with which to mock them, they are actually doing just that. When you present a villain to the public, then use something not intrinsic to their villain-ness to mock them, you are linking the former to the latter. You are, in fact, saying those non-intrinsic factors are actually intrinsic to their villain-ness, else why use that as the club? This is the link that forms in the watcher’s mind, consciously or no.

As progressive people, as people of good conscience, we need to speak out against these sorts of bigoted connections. We need to wield our teaspoons, as Ms. McEwan says, and bring a light to these patterns. Racism, like sexism, homophobia, ableism et al, are systemic and institutionalized. To fight it, we need to resist systematically, to each instance we encounter. If, like myself, you find yourself faced with an oppression that does not personally affect you (but you’ve been doing your reading), trust your gut a little. If you wonder that maybe it is bigoted, there’s a good chance that it is. If you’re wrong, then, like the fellow on the bus, people start thinking.

And that is always a good thing.