I’ve been mostly offline for the last several days, so I’m late in commenting on Bill Clinton’s lunch with some lefty bloggers at his Harlem office. Notice something missing from this photo?
Liza at CultureKitchen sure noticed:
What does it mean though that there are 20 bloggers invited to this lunch and not one is black or latino? What does it mean for this group of bloggers to be patting themselves on the backs for being with Clinton when they are all in Harlem and not one of them is a person of color? What does it mean for these people to be there and have not one of them raise this issue in their blogs?
Peter Daou, who organized the Clinton blogger lunch, responded:
Hi Liza – several bloggers were invited who couldn’t attend, including Oliver Willis (who you didn’t mention in your post). Also, I was told that more events like that are planned, and there will be an opportunity to invite bloggers who didn’t attend the first one.
So respectfully, you may have reached a conclusion without all the facts.
So Oliver Willis was invited, and (from what I’ve read elsewhere) Markos from Daily Kos was invited. Neither of them could make it, and – as far as I can tell – that was the sum total of any attempt to have racial diversity at this meeting. It’s hard to believe that racial diversity was a high priority when Daou put this lunch together.
Kai at Zuky wrote a great post about the gulf in viewpoints between the POC ((“POC” stands for “people of color.”)) bloggers who have, rightly, objected to the all-white Clintonpalooza, and the white liberals who are saying this is no big deal.
Here’s what I can make out, in the most generalized but hopefully clear terms (obviously, not all white liberals see things in similar terms and I certainly don’t speak for all people of color with this “POC perception” device, it’s just my way of explaining my view of constrasting perspectives):
Fact: The first Bill Clinton-blogger meeting was overwhelmingly attended by white bloggers.
White perception: An unfortunate coincidence.
POC perception: Hundreds of years of history and our own life experiences have taught us that racism often works its nefarious magic through seemingly benign cultural norms and all manner of fork-tongued mechanisms that lead to consistently one-sided representation and results.Fact: This was only the first of many meetings.
White perception: Let’s not make too much of this one event. There will be plenty of occasions in the future to discuss your pet issue.
POC perception: Hundreds of years of history and our own life experiences have taught us that racism often works its nefarious magic through seemingly benign cultural norms and all manner of fork-tongued mechanisms that lead to consistently one-sided representation and results. […]Fact: Oliver Willis was invited but couldn’t make it.
White perception: Organizers did their best to invite black folks this time and will do better next time.
POC perception: Oliver Willis is a great blogger who deserved the invite; but come on, is a single invitation really the outer limit of effort on a matter so central to the narrative of American history?
One difference that shows up here – and that frequently shows up in these discussions – is that (generalization alert! generalization alert!) POC bloggers focus on what actually happened, while white bloggers focus on establishing the purity of people’s hearts.
What happened is that there was a high-profile event in which a lot of liberal bloggers were honored with the chance to have lunch with one of the most influential Democrats in the country, and it was an all-white event. In the most literal sense, people of color were not at the table. That is what matters. Arguing that none of the organizers did it this way because they hate people of color isn’t a legitimate response; it’s missing the point. Inclusion is the point; the purity of white people’s hearts shouldn’t be the central issue here.
There should have been a greater attempt made to include minority bloggers. But I think it was unintentional. I will bet that when there’s another such event, and there will be, whether it’s by President Clinton or another Democrat, there will be a greater effort to include a more diverse group of bloggers.
(Notice how the subject suddenly becomes not the all-white event, but whether or not it was intentional? Another example of talking about what’s in people’s hearts instead of who’s given a seat at the table.)
I’m sure there will be a greater effort next time – but only because Liza, Kai, Bint, Zuzu, Terrance, Steve, Pam, Chris, and others are objecting to the lack of inclusion this time around. It is the complainers, not the folks who organize these lunches and other such events, who will make inclusion happen.
Unfortunately, a couple of white bloggers at Firedoglake (one of whom was at the Clinton luncheon) are determined to demonstrate how clueless and annoying white liberals can be when discussing racism. Christy Smith’s post explains that we shouldn’t talk about inclusion of people of color because it “misses the larger picture” and threatens “to take our eye off the real work.” I’m sure that all bloggers of color are grateful to have white liberal bloggers like Christy letting them know what’s in “the larger picture” and what “the real work” is; without her to correct them, they might mistakenly believe that inclusion is part of the the big picture, and is real work.
But Christy’s post is a NAACP meeting compared to her co-blogger T-Rex’s drivel. You see, in Liza’s post on Culture Kitchen, she crticized Jane (another Firedoglake blogger) for posting a racist blackface image and for lack of support for bloggers of color. ((I don’t know if that last criticism is accurate or not; Jane says she has been making efforts to include bloggers of color.)) T-Rex responded by literally telling Liza not to insult her betters:
So, Liza, dear, before you go assailing your betters and making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off, maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion. Although judging from your other posts that I read, mediocrity may be a chronic condition for you.
T-Rex later demonstrated that he’s a liar or an idiot by claiming to not have known that slapping down a woman of color for criticizing the race politics of her “betters” might be construed as having “racial baggage.” (By the way, Liza’s post was well-written and organized; all that fuss about “eighth grade English” appears to be because Liza misspelled the word “privileged.” I’m sure no blogger on Firedoglake has ever misspelled a word.)
I’m obviously bothered by the racism of T-Rex’s response, and I’m not the only one: check out Nanette‘s comment at TalkLeft, Brownfemipower (whose post is a must-read), and Zuzu, for starters. There’s too much good commentary for me to quote it all, but here’s a few brief bits. From Brownfemipower:
the tone of this post (and other posts that it mimics) reflects a passionate racism within the blogosphere that is quite disturbing. the internet is the driving tool of communication these days, all of us know that. who gets listened to and who doesn’t is not only reflective of the racism in the real world, but is also instrumental in continuing the silencing of “problematic” communities (i.e. communities that don’t buy/challenge structural propaganda). does it really mean absolutly nothing that clinton had an all-white luncheon? no, let’s unpack that ambigous language. does it really mean absolutly nothing that a former head of a racist imperialist nation/state had a luncheon with a an all-white group of people who control the “new frontier” of media?
In Brownfemipower’s comments, La Lubu writes:
This isn’t just about who was or who wasn’t invited anymore. All the references you’ll find referring to this as a “tempest-in-a-teapot” on white so-called progressive blogs speaks to the larger issue—”sit down and pour yourself a hot, steaming cup of shut-the-fuck-up. You wanna ride this bus? Go sit in the back.”
This comment at My Private Casbah, about the “some of my best friends are…!” defense T-Rex employed, deserves to be widely quoted:
To any and all people who do not identify themselves as people of color:
I beg of you, please, if you have any sense of decency, do not shame those black people that you call friends by making these sort of statements. There are few things worse than being with one of your melanin-inhibited buddies and having them do this to some random person of color. The person will likely view you as just another clueless white person but they’ll look at us, your friends, as the idiots since we evidently thought you were savvy enough to know why these statements and behaviors are so problematic.
For those readers who don’t know, Firedoglake is one of the most popular blogs on the planet; one disturbing thing about this is their obvious belief that their high hit count makes them better than Liza. ((Culture Kitchen is actually one of the most popular progressive blogs in existence. Not as big as the mega-blogs like Kos and Firedoglake, but I’d guess it’s in the top 1 or 2 percent of blogs, measured by readership.)) T-Rex writes “See, Liza’s pissed because nobody invited her to lunch with Big Dog. But, instead of coming right out and saying that, she’s seizing on this opportunity to try and generate herself some publicity by insinuating that there’s some kind of racist agenda at work.” And later, he writes “She wanted attention. Well, here’s some goddamn motherfucking attention.” Then Jane Hamsher (another Firedoglake blogger) said in comments: “[Liza’s] exploitation of a very real problem for personal gain is quite shameless.”
Needless to say, nothing Liza wrote supports the malicious claims that she’s an insincere publicity-hound. It’s seemingly inconceivable to Jane and T-Rex that Liza might be criticizing them because Liza sincerely believes that they screwed up.
There’s also a not-very-hidden bullying aspect to this; a smarmy “we’re a big blog, you peasant shits can’t criticize us” attitude. For instance, in the comments of Liza’s post, T-Rex announced his intention to attack Liza from Firedoglake by announcing “I’m going to make you a star.” (I’m not saying that big bloggers can’t critique small bloggers; but they should do it without the smary self-importance and the bullying attitude). And Terrance noticed that shortly after criticizing Firedoglake, he’s no longer on their blogroll. Similarly, Liza has been removed from the Kos blogroll.
One of the things Terrance points out in this excellent post is that the lefty blogosphere has “gatekeepers,” even though the gatekeepers themselves tend to deny this aspect to what they do. But the way that Kos and Firedoglake use de-linkings shows that at some level, they’re perfectly aware of their gatekeeping power, and they try to use it to punish their critics.
Frankly, the feminist in me is pleased that one of the mega-blogs is run by women ((At least, I think Jane and Christy run it, but I might be wrong about that, I don’t read FDL often.)) and (to their credit) includes a diverse bunch of bloggers. Which makes it even more of a shame that they’ve turned into whiny, clueless, racism-denying idiots the moment they’re criticized by a person of color. That this kind of behavior is acceptable on one of the most prominent progressive blogs in the world does the progressives, and the blogosphere, no credit.
UPDATE: More posts on this subject: Pen-Elayne (I recommend Donna’s posts in the comments, too), Ang’s Weird Ideas, and K/O. From K/O’s post:
With or without a lone African-American, the face of the Democratic Party does not look like that picture. Every single last one of us on the blogs knows it. We can’t be the party to take on Senator George Allen for his racial slurs one day and then ignore our own hypcrisy the next. It may well be, as we learned at Yearlykos, that the liberal blogosphere is significantly more white than the Democratic Party at large. Our response to that challenge should not be to shrug it off. Our job, in fact, is to address it.
Edited to add: Belle at Crooked Timber has a good post on this subject, too. (And I’m sure dozens of others that I’ve missed.)
UPDATE: It turns out the bit about Terrance being removed from Firedoglake’s blogroll was not true. I apologize to FDL for my part in spreading that rumor.
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]
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Amp, I’ve done two posts on this so far as well, here and here. They both have a good number of comments as well (at least for my blog, where the average comment thread is maybe 2).
A noteworthy point. I actually know TRex from years ago, back when we both attended the University of Georgia. So, I find it hard to believe that a white southern boy would have no clue that basically telling Liza to watch how she talked about her “betters” would basically come across as “Remember your place, girl!” The spelling/grammar corrections — a not-so-subtle way of suggesting a lack of literacy, and thus intelligence — is just icing on the cake.
Terrance, make sure it’s the same TRex. I had initially thought the poster on FDL was Ken Quinnell, as both Ken and Jane are members of the Liberal Coalition (to which I belong as well), but it’s actually someone named David Ferguson. (Gah, one more reason I prefer to deal with real names rather than handles…)
Oh, I checked. Unless there’s another David Ferguson in Georgia, who looks just like him, I’m pretty sure it’s the same guy.
The “I didn’t mean to” excuse should be removed from everyone’s vocabulary.
Not meaning to do something does not negate the fact that you did it anyway. It does not remove your responsibility. It does not make it OK to do it anyway. And it does not mean you should not work harder to do it right next time.
“I didn’t mean to exclude POC bloggers!” That’s lovely, but there are still only white faces in that room and only white voices were heard. POC are still denied a place at the table.
Being pure of heart and feeling bad about stuff doesn’t make anything better. Doing it better makes it better.
Thanks for the wonderful post. I am more than disgusted with Hamsher’s blog-lynching –and pardon for the strong imagery but that’s what’s it comes across as to me.
Because I first heard about this picture because of comments made about Jessica from Feministing and her breasts’ proximity to Bill Clinton I have to confess that I didn’t notice the lack of racial diversity in the picture.
That relative colorblindness (bloggers of color invited but unable to attend) was a problem created by those who made the selection and one that was compounded by those who say we shouldn’t see it as a problem.
One of the reasons this is a problem that shouldn’t be ignored or dismissed as much ado about nothing is that each little so-called nitpicky problem compounds the big problem of racism. The problem in this case isn’t motive, but results.
For example, if the economic aspect of racism makes it harder for some people of color to attend high-profile events such as this, they may not get the same benefit as those who could afford to attend. So even though those who set up photo ops didn’t create the financial inequality, assuming that creating a diverse list of invitees is the end of the organizers’ responsibility is a mistake.
The problem of racism is complex so our solutions can’t be simply, “I tried to get a diverse group.”
I can’t excuse the rude FDL responses, and I don’t know what the selection criteria were — I thought that the precipitating event was the blog reaction to the ABC 9/11 documentary, but it at least purported to be a representative group, which it obviously is not.
Did the invited bloggers all knew who else would be there? If not I am disinclined to blame them a priori, but maybe “next time” or on comparable occasions, every blog invited to such an event can have its own “buddy list” of blogs that, as a group, represent a more diverse set of individuals who link to each other, and ask for consideration of the whole group.
Well as a POC I say so what.
Just because a POC wasn’t in this particular meeting doesn’t mean Bill Clinton and his folks are bunch of raging racist. And if the POC bloggers didn’t show thats their problem. Maybe next time.
And I’m sure they didn’t say in their backrooms “Only white people can be at this lunch”
I’m also sure if he had only Black Bloggers, this post wouldn’t exist.
There is more to racism and sexism than straight-forward deliberate hatred. The most insidious prejudice is that which is born of apathy and inertia. Nobody’s getting strung up on a tree, so it’s OK, right?
If only Black bloggers were there, at least we can be assured that something other than the White point of view is being represented. We all know the White point of view. Let’s consider something else.
Thanks Denise. I’d like to suggest that people read books. The truth is to dismantle racism we have to look at the little things that maintain the system. This is a useful example of how good intentions can end up still supporting the system, so let’s all work hard and learn from it.
Peter Daou who is Arab American should be very careful about who he invites next time. My very humble take on this. Jane should seriously apologize for the blackface, Liza shouldnt have named a post “Jane Hamsher is an idiot” because it’s ambiguous– Jane was an idiot for the blackface but has worked her fingers to the bone pulling off critical blogosphere victories and TRex should seriously apologize for the Liza post. There is too much at stake in the next two months. I get a feeling some of the purely political bloggers are working their asses off before November and Jane did the stupid blackface post immediately before her very stressful Lamont win. I say her win because he couldn’t have won without FDL. It was also the first major win for the blogosphere. She should seriously apologize because there is too much at stake.
Nice roundup, Ampersand.
Terrance is right: TRex is David Ferguson from Athens; he posted a WSJ blurb and pic of himself on FDL on Aug. 10, followed by this nugget:
The WSJ mention occurred because TRex had dropped into my home state of CT to mingle with the FDL groupies in the Lamont campaign, which he described on FDL on Aug. 7:
Needless to say, these passages are attempts at sarcastic humor. What’s scary is that these sarcastic passages contain the same threads of thought and language as the non-sarcastic post he directed at Liza. If it was self-indulgent and unfunny in the former instances, it was unmasked and ugly in the latter.
Equally scary is that this is the same guy who posted this anti-racist screed on Aug. 15 deconstructing the coded racism of the right :
Irony anyone?
Peace,
Kai
Thanks for taking this on and so thoroughly setting out the issues, amp. I was fairly confident you (or someone here) would, after they got wind of it. Hopefully with people coming back from the weekend more will jump on the bandwagon. That’s one reason I’ve been (uncharacteristically!) leaving comments all over the place about the racist post – I wanted there to be some sort of record left, so it didn’t get lost in the shuffle or buried under boobs.
I wanted to comment on your second footnote. Or rather, to repost part of a comment that I left at feministe. Of course, Liza is well able to speak for herself, but as a disinterested party (I don’t know Liza or Jane personally, have never interacted with either of them) I figured I’d just go ahead and search it out. Anyway, here is my impression of that particular issue, in reply to another commenter:
————————
I got tired of this one (not from you, it’s being thrown around in many places in order to excuse or at least mitigate FDL’s behaviour… yours just happens to be handy)
Anyway, I got tired of this one, so I finally went and looked it up.
Here is what Liza said:
She references an earlier post, about the Lieberman in blackface, where she says this:
To which Hamsher and TRex replied that they did a lot of linking to CT Blogger, who is black. And he is, and they did link to him, mostly showcasing his videos of this or that. Although I doubt that he is the only black or brown Connecticut blogger, it’s still a good thing that he was linked.
However, in none of the posts dealing directly with black issues in CT… whether it’s Lieberman handing out literature, or vote buying, or attending this or that event and so on, are there are any actual black Connecticut people speaking to the issues… except for this one, which is a video of Maxine Waters (who is actually Californian, of course), taken by CT Blogger and also I think he has some commentary on his site.
So yes, while they did link fairly frequently to the mostly videoblogging of at least one black blogger, I think Liza’s point about the speaking for black people without actually bringing in local bloggers of color to speak for themselves in some way, or at least promoting them doing so, combined with the assumption of right needed in order to think it was a really good idea for her to post a picture of Lieberman in blackface, stands up pretty well.
[added disclaimer thingy] FDL, like anyone else, has a perfect right to choose who they feature on their blogs, who writes posts and so on. They do have a diverse crew of posters and guest contributors and, as acknowledged, they did link to CT Blogger and that is to be commended. It doesn’t change Liza’s point about speaking for the black people of CT instead of bringing them on to speak for themselves, though, even if it was perfectly within FDL’s rights and/or mode of operation to not do so.
Or something like that.
———————————
Oh gee… what happened to preview? ack
I just remain totally befuddled that any actual liberal or feminist would agree meet Clinton. Welfare reform was hardly a huge progressive step forward.
Nannette,
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What I keep asking myself is why the bloggers who were in attendance, and who are now offering the purity-of-motives defense, are jumping up and down saying, “The lack of POC here really was no big deal!” rather than trying to get their heads around *why*, to the people who think it’s a big deal, it matters.
Shouldn’t empathy be one of the tools in your toolbox if you’re trying to build an inclusive grassroots?
Maia – why the puzzlement? I’d agree to meet almost any influential politician of the last 20 years regardless of affiliation, or how I felt about them – once they were safely out of office, and unlikely to run again. It’s not an endorsement – they’re not running in politics anymore. Why? Sheer curiousity, and a desire to meet the people who have shaped so much of the world I have lived in. I’d even agree to meet W (again, once out of office), and my opinion of him has to be moderated considerably to be spoken of publicly.
One last thing (hopefully), before I go back to my own neglected work, and serial lurking (oh, and you’re welcome Liza, my pleasure.)
Over the past few day’s discussion of the lack of color at the meeting of the Clinton bloggers, various people (including some of the participants) have made comments indicating that, even if there were no actual POC there, the issues related to them, and their concerns can be, were and will be addressed by the white bloggers there. And that, as progressives/liberals, etc, naturally they are allies, it was just a mistake, but trust us/them to speak up for you, blah blah blah.
That was entirely shot out of the water pretty quickly when they all came back and (except for Atrios, I think, who just put a link to others who were there, not writing anything else) wrote their gushing fanposts without one of them mentioning the lack of color in the room, even to explain that one black blogger was invited but he couldn’t make it. A few have now posted on the topic (after it was brought up by others), but…
I just went through Talk Left’s list of attendees (I assume it is a complete one) and none… I mean, again, not one of them has even mentioned the related racist screed at FDL, either separately or as part of their “why all the bloggers were white and we said nothing” posts, let alone disavowed it.
Wait, I lie… Talk Left did post a link to it, after I pointed it out to her in comments of her “friday night blog fights” post… with this comment:
So, a link to the post, with the immediate statement that, no matter what, she stands by what FDL does and says (basically).
Of course, most people knew that “it doesn’t matter if people of color are there to present their interests and views, white people can do it just as well” thing was a crock in the first place, but I think stuff like this just reinforces it more.
I agree with Terrance and Kai and others though… the racist FDL post, and the reactions/non reactions to it, has done a huge favor in stripping the masks off of people so that one can know who they are and where they stand. Much healthier that way, I think.
As a daily reader of FDL but sometime poster and as a sometime reader of Alas, (although I was glue to you during the Schiavo imbroglio, because some of the best analysis was to be found here), may I say we are doing what we do best: eating our own. Now, it’s not to say that you don’t have some points to make. There were no bloggers of color, and I would suppose that that should be laid at the feet of Daou who set up the last minute invites. Because it was last minute is probably why the invitees didn’t know or question those who showed up.
But once the issue is there, the bloggers could have said, “you know, you’re right. In the heat of the moment, and because it was so last minute, I didn’t know or notice and that is to my bad. I would like to see amends made and serious attempts at inviting POC to the next meeting (which should be very soon) will be done. or I won’t go.” But no, everyone got all defensive. Which should tell you something as well.
I made two posts about the meeting on FDL. One was that I hoped that the attendees didn’t get all starry eyed about being next to the celebrity that is Bill Clinton b/c he is still a fallible human. Granted he’s a darn sight smarter than W but my goodness (and I didn’t say this) he was dumb enough to think a blow job with an intern in the oval office would not somehow be discovered? I mean, who does he think he is, JFK?
But the second post that I made dealt with what happens when the Dems actually take a majority in the House or Senate or, god forbid, the WH? We have been out of power and the snipers in the back room for so long, can we actually turn our mindset around and come together to govern this country??? Methinks that with this little brouhaha, we are showing that we still cannot, without, as I said above, eating our own.
I’m sorry, but I disagree with the premise of “I didn’t mean to” being an excuse used by whites when they commit an offense of omission. Isn’t it possible that the organizers of this event just weren’t thinking about race? Isn’t it possible that for whatever reason, they had a loose network of associates that they thought to invite, and that for whatever reason that network contained few persons of color? Is it reasonable to say that they should have had more African-Americans and Latinos in their circle of associates? And Asian-Americans, Indian-Americans and Native Americans? (I don’t seem to recall mention of those ethnicities) Or that they should have realized that their circle of associates wouldn’t be racially representative enough, so that they should have instead sought out an acceptably diverse group of bloggers elsewhere? The lunch was apparently put together in a few weeks, so there should have been time. Wait, someone pointed out that the person who organized this was Arab-American. So does that mean that White Americans aren’t to blame for the racial makeup of this group? Do I as a white male have to live my life constantly checking to make certain that any activity I take part in has the correct racial makeup?
Denise wrote:
Reverse the positions of the words black and white, and this is a deeply offensive comment. Why isn’t it offensive now? It is a baldly racist statement. Is it OK because Denise didn’t mean to be racist? Still, she most certainly was.
I once worked on a project where I made a mockup of a branding image for a corporate web site. It was all of 4 inches wide by 1 inch tall. I tried to make it human by including images of people, and I included male and female, child and adult, black, latino, asian and white. When I got the comments back, I was told to remove the image of the only white male. The reason being that we didn’t want to offend anyone. Frankly, I was offended. I had been as deliberately diverse as was possible, and yet still failed to make it acceptably diverse because there is a white male? Is this OK because the people in charge didn’t mean to be racist either? However, they absolutely were.
If we want to spend our lives searching for offense, there will always be examples. We cannot possibly manage to live our lives always surrounded by the correct racial mix, regardless of our ethnicity. The organizers of the lunch with Clinton certainly failed to make an adequate attempt to invite an ethnically diverse group. However, the fact that some of the people they did invite are non-white suggests that it truly was the case that they didn’t mean to exclude people. They simply didn’t mean to offend.
To take a phrase from Kanye West, Bill Clinton doesn’t care about black people, and the real question is “why should he care?”
I’m a black person and I am tired of leftists expressing the sentiment that when white people get together to talk about things that are important to other white people they should invite black people. I don’t want to be the black person sitting at the table for no other reason that the fact that the good white people invited me because they don’t want to look racist. Who cares whether or not a particular black person had anything substantive to add to the conversation, we just need a black person, and any black person will do.
Tokenism is racism. In fact I would say that any white person who feels like they need a black person sitting next to them so that they don’t appear racist is even more of a racist than the person who simply didn’t notice that no black people were present.
For future reference, I don’t want to be the black person that gets invited to events because you needed a black person that day and Oliver Willis was busy. I don’t want to be the black person that you invited somewhere just so that you could have a speck of brown in your pictures so that you wouldn’t appear racist.
Thanks but no thanks. I’m sure your heart is in the right place but the execution is all wrong.
No, it would be a deeply non-sensical comment. White people are dominant in America. White people run the culture. White people are on TV. White people have the money. The most popular sitcoms and dramas on TV focus on White people. The news is about White people, except when it’s about Black people killing White people. We all know about White people. White politics is regular politics, POC politics is Special Interests. That’s just the truth. The way it is.
You can’t just switch the words around as if they mean the same thing! White and Black mean vastly different things in our culture. Doing that to my words is about as meaningful as switching the words “cats” and “dogs” when I say “cats meow and dogs bark”.
Re moe99’s comment about “eating our own,” I’m left wondering who “we” are and just which folks are “our own.” It’s a question that comes up quite often, especially when things like this or the pie fight or the tinfoil hat purge or the BMT purges … or when the Democratic Party drops the ERA from its platform and throws big money behind forced pregnancy candidates or when senators vote for a war or to end bankruptcy protections or confirm imperial justices….
“Don’t eat our own” is a cry made by many a blogopundit and consent manufacturer — especially those who start shouting STFU when someone starts talking about core progressive values — but such don’t-rock-the-boat sentiments do nothing but increase the tensions that lead to such behavior. It won’t do to once again sweep fundamental differences under the rug.
What happens when the Dems take Congress? Hopefully they’ll unite in opposition to the worst president in US history. But I expect they’ll fall apart within a year. Why? Because aside from opposing Bush (and Lieberman won’t even do that), the Dems are a pretty disparate bunch, and far detached from the progressive roots that are kept outside of the gates, crashed or not.
Between racial privilege and right-wing boob-obsession, this photo has exposed quite a bit of unfortunate attitudes and behavior, and in a turning-over-that-rock spirit, I, for one, hope we’re better off for it.
Ok, so now I see the whole picture here. I lose my computer for a week and miss this story.
I read the FDL post…..good example of how liberal whites do not at all transcend racism. That was an infuriating post.
Media girl. What I meant about eating our own is the fact that those who support the Dem candidates are some of their most vociferous critics after the election. Up in Washington state, we have what is known as a Dan Evans Republican, which is a term used for moderate, good government Republicans. There used to be quite a few. Not one has a raised a voice or a pen to criticize George W. Bush. For not one thing. One would expect that folks like Dan Evans who are strong environmental supporters might at least offer a feeble protest when ANWR is about to be despoiled? Nah. They know to keep their mouth shut to enable them to stay in power. Not so the Dems. It is a strength and a curse at the same time, given the opposition.
I think I know what you mean, moe99, but I don’t see much backbone in the Democratic party, either, especially when it comes to K Street. The only difference is the (slight?) variance among the people they’ve sold out to. Biden is the banker’s Democrat. Presumed Senator-elect Casey could win a Republican slot in just about any state. And I have no idea what Hillary stands for anymore, what with all her focus-group-tested image management.
What I wonder is why, when most of the country seems to be clearly left of both parties in Congress, there’s so much pressure to STFU when it comes to progressive values. It’s like everyone is trying to appease Rush Limbaugh.
The Democrats did this before. They undermined their own liberal base and put Hubert Humphrey up to lead their ticket in 1968 with a pro-war message. We all know what came of that election: Nixon won on a “secret plan” (to end the war) campaign.
Now our new Republicratic Party is marching into a close one this November. What will we get as a result?
It’s like everyone is trying to appease Rush Limbaugh.
Y’all better appease him. The man’s had his drugs taken away. He will fuck you up.
And of course, lost in the shuffle of boobs and “don’t look at the elephant” is the fact that an operative for Hilary Clinton got access to the “big dog” for a bunch of supposedly thought-leading, grassroots building, ATM, progressive bloggers. It’s even funnier that only one of those identifiers is accurate.
Yes, how kind of them to let the ‘other’ folks know that their issues were well represented at the table.
Criticism after the election doesn’t mean shit, not even what passes for “vociferous” amongst liberals these days. Criticism during a campaign might actually do some good. Or do all the anti-war groups that let Kerry and his apologists slap a muzzle on them now feel amply rewarded for their idiotic loyalty ?
And I second Maia’s comment about Clinton. Not that I’ve called myself a liberal in years. :/
Maia: I just remain totally befuddled that any actual liberal or feminist would agree meet Clinton. Welfare reform was hardly a huge progressive step forward.
My thoughts exactly. I’ve been scratching my head over this whole thing. What feminist or progressive wants to have his or her picture taken with Clinton? Either one? Who wants to meet with either one (other than to publicly debate them)? I’d like to have been invited so I could turn them down, after I told them how I really felt about their invitation!
All I could think looking at the crowd of bloggers who showed up all smiling is, come ON. Didn’t you have something better to do that day? It is surely no surprise that all the faces were white. Based on my cursory skim through the list, it looks like they were also all het. Did anybody see anyone who was poor, a single mom, or differently abled? Then again, some of the big dogs so-called are not in any way, shape or form, feminist (rimes with “Saily Oz”) or progessive, let alone radical.
I was recently invited to be interviewed on a feminist radio station about my Rape of the Hadji Girl posts, and I am excited about that. I would be worried if Clinton wanted in my good graces and would run like hell from anything like that. From my perspective, what we bloggers are, at our best, is media. Good journalism. The power of blogging is not so different from the power of any sort of journalism, reporting, writing; it lies in the writer’s freedom and commitment to the presentation of news and analysis which is as uncorrupted by party politics, deals with politicians or political power-brokers, or personal political ambition as it is possible to be. Do any of you see journalists you admire (admittedly, these days, if you’re like me, this is a short list!) posing for pictures with Bill Clinton or George Bush or any of the usual similar subjects? Neither do I. So why are bloggers doing it? My thinking is, in general, bloggers — as is true of any new grassroots movement people — are generally politically unsophisticated and so they are flattered by the attention. They wanna run with the big dogs. This is never, never a good thing! It is in this way that really thriving grassroots movements lose the energy, integrity and above all, freedom which make them a real force for change and good in the world.
Heart
Oh ms_xeno I’m definately not a liberal myself – but neither is Clinton – that’s my point. I may not be a liberal, but I know enough about Clinton and liberalism to doubt that any liberal would touch him with a barge poll.
I can see your argument Tapetum – although I don’t share your desire to spend time with those who have spent power. But I’d also be suspicious of the reasons the people in power wanted to meet me. In this case it’s really clear why Bill Clinton wants to meet bloggers, and anyone who met with him should acknowledge that the whole point of these meetings is to build support for Hilary Clinton, and give them liberal/feminist cover that they haven’t earned.
Cats and dogs are different species. Blacks and whites are the same species. To use this example correctly, it would be more accurate to say poodles bark and cocker spaniels bark. And they do.
To argue that our culture needs to be more inclusive is fine. I certainly agree. To argue that we’ve heard enough from one race, and that we should only hear from others is not.
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I have been following these threads with interest on multiple blog sites. My own curiosity stems from the fact that almost nobody references this single and isolated event in the context of Clinton’s overall position and history of action towards blacks.
Isn’t it appropriate to have specific variation in racial composition, so long as the overall effect is OK?
Clinton has got to meet with a gazillion people each year, in a variety of formats. And he’s been doing so for a long time. If his OVERALL tendency is to exclude POC, that would be germane, and would be a much more serious condemnation than the racial composition of a single meeting. OTOH, if his OVERALL tendency is to include POC, surely he’s eneitled to have variation from time to time–sometime he might meet with all POC, sometimes he might meet with whites.
Otherwise, it seems like he’s in the “better not ever drop below ____ percent POC” situation. Though few people are willing to admit exactly what number of POC they would have wanted at the meeting (or invited to the meeting) so as NOT to castigate clinton for it: 1? 2? 5? 10?
I personally see that approach as appalling: You can’t count the white/POC ratio like an economic marker. But then again, I also think that focusing on a SINGLE meeting of a president who has over two decades of history to evaluate is a problematic analysis. If someone claims that “zero is too few” then unless she is willing to accept that “nonzero would have been fine.” she is IMO obligated to say what number she would expect to be satisfied. Which (hopefully) shows the problem with the analysis.
Well, here is the issue. I’m not sure this is Clinton’s fault (or Clinton’s people, more appropriately), nor the blogger’s fault. I agree its a problem, but upon hearing that Clinton met with bloggers, the one’s he met with are pretty much who I was expecting. They included the most prominent liberal bloggers. I’d be more concerned that such a list doesn’t include any non-white voices with the acknowledged exceptions of Willis and Markos. That seems a far more complex problem and one which by no means lets liberal bloggers off the hook. What makes a prominent blog? I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m enough of a reader of liberal blogs to be aware of that. I started reading TalkingPointsMemo years ago by the white Josh Marshall. Eventually I branched out to reading Atrios, Kevin Drum, and the folks at Pandagon, then later myDD, DailyKos, Alas. A mostly white group, but also a pretty small one when I look at the blog-rolls at these sites. Heck, I was hardly aware of FDL aside from the painfully stupid posting of the blackface image. Now, I gather there is a lot of cross promotion with these blogs. Are voices of color being denied access to this cooperative means of distribution? I doubt intentionally, but they may still be shut out. What a lot of white people need to realize when discussing issues of race like this, is that its not about assigning blame or responsibility. Its not that anyone thinks they meant to exclude black. Nor should anyone think that. But that’s not an excuse, either. That doesn’t make it okay or make the problem disappear. I didn’t mean to can be a fair and accurate statement, but it can’t end a discussion either. A lot of white people get defensive when white privlage comes up, but frankly we need to cut that shit out. I may not have asked for white privlage, but I got it all the same. I can admit that, and more white people need to be able to do that. Thats the only way we can *start* this discussion.
BStu, it’s not just people of colour, it’s any of us who don’t tow the same line of the corporate and political paymasters. Anyone who’s opinion might upset the operatives or advertisers. At dkos, etc. it was the “women’s studies set”, “conspiracy theorists”, “dirty hippies”, ” towel heads”, and now it’s “the uppity negroes” apparantely. At this point it’s not surprising me anymore but making me really, really sad.
We obviously have so much further to go than I had hoped. And the worst part for me is that we have to re-battle all the same battles against “the left” and THEN try and stem the fascism from the neo-cons (or vice versa). I’m getting pretty damn tired of the whole lot of it.
Great summary and great post, Amp, thanks.
..whoa. were people really saying “towel heads” at Kos??
“Dirty hippies” in Kozville means being against the war before we had permission from either Koz or Murtha. :p
Yeah, Clinton was right in the middle of Harlem, but it aparently never occurred to him to wonder why he wasn’t seeing any POC at the tea party. It never ceases to amaze me how many otherwise sensible people will continue to make excuses for this guy, as if the sun shone out his ass.
Maia:
Yeah, I kinda’ figured that from your blog. :D I personally think that the idiotic cleaving of a lot of liberals in the U.S. to guys like Clinton is because he’s their own version of Ronnie– “The Great Communicator.” He looks so good up there, so compassionate and bright, that nobody really cares deep down what he says. It’s all about looking “Presidential,” not about actually behaving like a human being who gives a shit about something other than himself.
It was either at kos or BT (or both, can’t find my bookmarks atm) during the Danish cartoon controversy.
Sorry, that should be “nobody cares deep down what he does.”
This column from January by Margaret Kimberly sums up my feelings about Clinton. Either Clinton:
Great post, Amp.
She was most certainly not acting racist, nor is she one in case you’re working up to that. Though I knew upon reading it that it would only be a matter of time(minutes) before someone called her words racist and/or called her one. *sigh* And right on time, too. It’d be nice to see some patterns broken. It’s too bad Whites can’t be forced to learn about the dynamics that shape our society and why you can not “flip flop” situations like this one to use as comparison. The problem is, that the liberal and progressive Whites would likely claim an exemption from that rule and insist that it’s only their conservative brethren that need that education, when actually sometimes I wonder if it’s us who need it most.
If Black bloggers were there, it would bring more perspectives and POVs to the process, because there is not just one Black POV either(how often are Black individuals in a group of White people asked to speak for, answer for and represent their entire race? A lot, and if that one Black blogger had attended, there probably would have been attempts made to treat him like that. ). There are many POVs that share similarities in beliefs and perspectives, but there are differences as well due to experiences, backgrounds and other factors such as class, ableness, sexual orientation, age, religion, etc. These similiarities and differences would enrich the process as would be the case if other people of color from different ethnic and racial groups were present as well as those who are biracial or multi-racial. As would inviting bloggers of different sexual orientations(and these may intersect with race, class and gender as well which adds to the uniqueness of each person’s perspective). It could have been a much better event in my opinion. More representative of what is out there, if that was truly their intent(which I have a hard time beliving) but it would be more honest. I do not believe that the “liberal” blogsphere is the sole domain of Whites as appeared to be reflected in that photograph. To imply that, is not only exclusionary, it’s dishonest.
It’s too bad these White liberal bloggers do not, can not or will not see outside their little box. But then racial privilage says they don’t have to and I guess they don’t feel the need to question that.
I found in general off-line that this is very true. I’ve been to meetings where honestly I don’t know whether the intent is to work for changing the political and social structure of local government’s way of doing business or angling to be on this ad hoc committee or that task force. And auditioning to get on these panels is a waste of time anyway, because our local government always ignores their work product anyway. They are for show, and they are for drawing on those that the government believes are hungry for advancing their positions. But grass-roots does lose its energy when people start being preoccupied with pleasing those in the system and catering to them, in the belief that it’s necessary to work within(or more accurately, operate within the comfort level of the system) to accomplish goals. Everything good gets watered down so quickly.
I’m not sure which bothered me more because both bothered me quite a bit. The lack of inclusiveness towards bloggers who are people of color or all the rationalizations used defending this behavior in the blogsphere. The, oh lighten up, next time we’ll do better. Or the Oh, there is just no pleasing everyone (:eyes rolled:). Or the well, don’t get cross with me it wasn’t intentional. Or the, well, we invited a couple(so-and-so and so-and-so) and they didn’t show, it’s not our fault. These are all such old excuses, removed, dusted off(not that there’s that much dust between uses) and put out there. It always amazes me(no not really, I’m just tired today) that people act amazed at being called on their crap when it’s the same crap that’s been used and seen a zillion times before, including inside “progressive” movements.
And the personal attacks made against bloggers who spoke up challenging them on this issue. Shameful.
Thanks, Radfem.
You know, it’s funny, Ampersand’s post contains excerpts from the piece I wrote about the “perceptual gulf” in which I tried to lay out in tiresome specificity the different ways in which white folks and people of color respond to a set of facts. Yet right here in the thread, we see white folks making the very arguments I was trying to clarify with my “White perception / POC perception” device…!
*Sigh*
I suppose one could switch the words “black” and “white” in discussions of American society. For example:
“In the course of American history, blacks brutally kidnapped tens of millions of whites from their European homeland and enslaved them under a vicious black supremacy that served as the economic foundation for the most powerful empire in history. The black slaveholders known as the Founding Fathers wrote in their Constitution that whites constituted three-fifths of a person, in order to give black aristocrats more electoral leverage in perpetuating the enslavement of whites. Even after slavery was abolished and the Constitution amended, blacks continued to lynch, terrorize, and oppress the white descendants of kidnapped European slaves. Even today, our society’s institutions of power — the White House, Congress, courts, corporations, media culture — are overwhelmingly dominated by blacks.”
See? Makes perfect sense.
Peace.
It’s kind of weird to read all these 3rd-party screeds and analyses about TRex, when I actually know the guy (he’s the brother of a close friend of mine) and I know he’s anything but sexist, racist, etc.
I’m not excusing anything, one way or another. I’m just saying. It’s definitely odd to read about someone you know being discussed like this.
Sailorman,
The all white composition of the group reflects badly on the progressive blogosphere, not on Clinton (not even on Daou, although his pissy response to Liza missed the point in a troublesome manner). And, as you point out for Clinton, we also have a reasonably long history of behavior for the progressive blogosphere, and that history is not pretty when it comes to racial integration. It is even less pretty when it comes to the treatment of bloggers of color who talk about race. This event and, even more so, grossly racist follow-ups like TRex at FDL or Kos’s delinking of CultureKitchen are a further and continuing demonstration of a clearly established problem. This isn’t about what the quota of POC for that meeting should have been (at least 3, although even a token 1 would have saved the meeting from most of the response it has gotten), this is about the larger problem of exclusionary practices in the progressive blogosphere. And unlike Ann Alhouse’s criticism of Clinton after the meeting (which was never on its supposed point to begin with), the discussion of the blizzard has seemed to me to be pretty clear on the real problems throughout.
Well, I’m glad at least one POC finally ‘gets it’. The Dem party talks a fine talk, eh? But they fall far short of the Reps in action! Ditto for almost any minority group which tradtionally supports Dems.
Until more people wake up and count actions and not intentions, Dems will continue to get away with an all-white gathering in Harlem while Reps get bashed for “not doing enough”.
I have been following both permutations with distress and frustration. It probably represents my surfing pattern (since I am a pretty idiosynctratic reader of theblogosphere) that I saw the ‘boobs’ discussion first. I am also out of the loop enough to have no idea of the significance of the group of people in that photo – what were they meeting about and who were they purported to represent? but if folks think that either representation or respect requires a more realistic and conscious racial makeup, that’s fair enough.
Even regardless of the importance of the people in the picture, the piling on against people of color who spoke out, and the despicable language of some folks involved just reveals to some what the rest already knew. There is a whole heap of defensiveness among white people, whose self-image and public image among whites is more important than addressing concerns raised by under-represented folks. Failing do deal with that defensiveness re-institutionalises racism (in social and online ‘institutions’). gross!
(not to equate the two, which are different in many respects, but the response of Althouse and subsequent piling on to the woman in the picture was also gross and similarly re-institutionalises sexism)
but I also had to speak up to Alex. Because I figure it’s my turn to say it for the millionth time, regarding the assertion that black folk and white folk are the same race and thus the terms have no meaning and are interchangeable.
The point is that you can’t reverse the terms “black” and “white” and make sense because one group (of the two black and white) is disproportionately represented in society at nearly all levels. One group’s voice is heard more often, one group’s interests are represented and served, one group is defined as the norm.
you could only switch the terms if you could ignore the reality of the rest of society, and since the point of the argument itself is about representative power and who gets to be heard, which makes it especially silly to try to ignore that issue.
“But the way that Kos and Firedoglake use de-linkings shows that at some level, they’re perfectly aware of their gatekeeping power, and they try to use it to punish their critics.”
Um, ever heard of the Townhouse listserve? Serious gatekeeping.
Kudos for realizing that the Dem party pretty much takes black voters for granted – which is retarded, since they CANNOT win without them. If you want real national power, demand a better deal from the Dems (how about real initiatives to help inner cities and “grade 13” prep courses to help smart kids from bad schools get into college on their own merits?) or go and see what kind of a deal you can cut with Republicans? Either way you’re looking at increased leverage.
“Do I as a white male have to live my life constantly checking to make certain that any activity I take part in has the correct racial makeup?”
Wow Alex, my husband had the same sort of argument, which is valid except he didn’t put it as (yes) defensively as you did. (This sort of thing sounds like “how dare I be inconvenienced and have my privilege questioned for even a second!”, although I’m sure you didn’t mean it to.)
My response to him (and to you): No, not every activity. But one which you know will get prominent coverage on the internet? Yeah, you might want to diversify it a bit.
Good point, SmartBlkWoman, but then where’s the (color) line drawn? That white people in power should never even try to diversify gatherings beyond inviting only other white people because if they invite any non-whites it’ll be tokenism? That doesn’t sound like much of a solution.
spiderleaf, I don’t think the “Peter Daou works for Hillary, please put 2 2 together, invited bloggers!” angle was missed at all. That was briefly noted by a number of bloggers before the Jessica’s Boobs and All White Photo issues even arose. But you know the ‘net, we have the attention spans of fleas. :)
Exactly so, ripley, it’s the “piling on” effect, the fact that some bloggers get all defensive about it and refuse to even consider a bit of self-examination. Even if they wind up disagreeing, at least give folks the courtesy of thinking about it for a second or two. But they’re too busy mocking wingnuts for focusing on Jessica’s boobs. It’s just easier to make fun of wingnuts than to examine one’s own possible culpability.
Right now, in terms of discussion among the liberal blogs on my blogroll, post about the “Jessica” aspect of this gathering seems to be outnumbering those about the “all white photo” aspect by a ratio of at LEAST four to one.
Memo to POC bloggers:
Cozy up to Mark Warner and hold out for cash. Kos knows: Warner delivers. And the petit fois gras? To die for!
I’ve noticed that ratio too, even though I’ve only gone to a few sites, though I think a couple were “big” blogs. I don’t think I’ll be going back.
I was going to ask SmartBlkWoman some questions on her post too, but then while going to these other sites and seeing how the “invited” Black bloggers were referred to, not to mention one who was pointed out for being Latino and another for having a Lebanese background, as *proof* of diversity, I remembered a couple lines in her post and had a *click* moment. I do think that there’s a way to be inclusive in dialogues which are of concern to people from all different races, genders, etc.(because the audience was intended to represent the “liberal blogsphere” which I think is much more diverse than what was depicted in that photograph) and not engage in tokenism. Though honestly, the attitudes and expressed words that I saw in display in these dialogues on some of these sites made me wonder if tokenism would have been avoided. After all, to invite only two Black bloggers and was it none from other ethnic or racial groups? Were they invited there to fully participate or as an afterthought? What about anyone else? What about women of color? Weren’t they left out completely?
I’m to the point now where all I can do is laugh. This , from the beginning, could not have been handled worse by the self proclaimed “leaders of the blogosphere” if they tried. I’m anxiously awaiting whatever the next stupid thing is that they are going to do. There is no way, after that post, that there is any hope of black attendees at whatever the next event is will be seen as anything other than tokenism or some sort of affirmative action inclusion.
Radfem, Daou invited one black blogger, Oliver Willis. And two half latino bloggers, kos and pachacutec (or whatever), from Firedoglake. Which, if he had gone, would have made 3 people from that one site, actually. But anyway, they both declined.
Amanda of Pandagon says she was sounded out about coming, but she didn’t want to go, I guess. Her co-blogger, Pam in Durham was not issued an invitation.
I have no idea what they were thinking, or who is the brilliant *cough* brain coming up with all these “handling the controversy” moves. They apparently think that silence on this issue (FDL racist post) will de-escalate the conflict, and I guess they hope it all goes back to normal after that. Again, complete cluelessness, lol. I think in some minds they are hearing “if we just keep silent, it’ll all die down”. And in some minds they are hearing “they have all kept silent, showing that they would rather be allied with the power structure than against racism. par for the course.”
I have to wonder though… whatever one thinks of Clinton and his policies in general, and their specific effects on people of color, the guy is an excellent politician and one that is used to speaking to black people and other POC… why didn’t they ask him for advice on how to handle that fact that, inadvertently, they wound up being all white.
Instead, some have said they waited til after the meeting was over… and asked Daou. Or maybe not asked, but they all discussed it with him and each other… and it seems, true to form, came up with the worst possible solution. Ignore it and hope no one notices, lol. And then, of course, attack and demean them when they do.
First, an apology. One of Denise’s statements in comment #10 typifies a position I strongly object to. The way I reacted could be taken as a personal attack. This was a mistake, and I am sorry if anyone was offended by it. I chose my words poorly, and the long delay in writing this post is due to my trying to make sure I don’t repeat the error. Do I believe Denise is a racist? No. Do I have an issue with a statement she made? Yes.
I’m afraid that this is going to be a long post.
I don’t believe that you can define whether or not someone is expressing a racist view by their race. If we are going to have standards to adhere to, then they have to apply fairly to all. So the concept that the default for white persons is that they are racist unless explicitly trying not to be, but that all others cannot be racist because of history or social dynamic doesn’t work for me. To illustrate this, I pointed out that swapping the terms black and white makes the statement objectionable. A number of people have said that you can’t swap the terms black and white and have an equivalent statement. The objections took two forms: examples where the use is absurd, and that the history or social dynamic of the two make them inherently incomparable. Let’s look at the two.
First, the examples. They both use flawed analogies. Dogs do not equal cats; neither equals people. So refuting an argument that people should be held to the same standard by saying that cats and dogs cannot be doesn’t hold up. The second example takes a brief history and swaps out the terms. Yes, it’s absurd. However, history happened in this region during this period in one way. Of course making any change won’t work. How does this relate to a statement which is made now and in which both permutations of this statement are real? Does this analogy mean that no white person ever applied this statement to persons of color? Of course not. So yes, it shows a use of swapping that is silly, but it misses the point.
Next, the dynamic and history objection. Let me use a different set of examples of the swap which have a history and social dynamic:
To me these are both awful things to see in equal measure. Swap the terms Catholic and Protestant, and it is still equally bad. Christian/Jew/Muslim/Hindu, all still bad. Black/White/Latino/Asian, still bad. This is hardly an exhaustive list. I am reasonably sure that the events described in any permutation above have certainly happened in the recent past, each with its own justification. If someone can see any way to say that one is less meaningful, less awful, more acceptable than the others, I would say to that person that we will never agree. And I would say that history suggests that replying in kind is not a particularly effective way to solve the issue.
The bloggers who met with President Clinton made an egregious error by not seeking out more POC bloggers to join them. When you’re just a bunch of bloggers grabbing some lunch, it’s no big deal. When you’re meeting a former President ostensibly representing the liberal blogosphere, it’s something else. They are no doubt having a perspective changing learning experience, complete with the irony that they are facing some of the same kind of criticism that they themselves have leveled at politicians. However, no one here has stated a belief that the organizers called for or sought to actively exclude POCs. Had the organizers done so, I would be outraged, as I’m sure everyone else here would be, and rightfully so. So let me revisit the statement that I object to one last time:
Please make your own call.
Oh, kai… you carry on as if the Founding Fathers and the slave trade still had some influence on the way we think and live or somethi–
Oops. :o
There is something you haven’t considered Alex. Racism is based in ignorance. A black person who distrusts or even hates whites is usually basing that on things that have actually happened to him/her. Not just one nasty person who called him n*gger, but a hundred. Not just one time being told, I’m sorry the position has been filled, I’m sorry the apartment is taken, etc.
A white racist usually bases it on things he/she has heard. N*gger jokes, Reagan talking about welfare queens and their cadillacs, the anectodes about unqualified blacks getting the job, university placement or scholarship, etc. With maybe one or two times a black person got uppity or nasty with him, while discounting all the normal interactions he has had with black people.
So even now, comparing shiites with sunni is different, since both probably have reasons to distrust each other and have real life basis for animosity. In order to have peace people do have to find ways to build trust and get past the animosity, but it doesn’t do anyone any good to ignore that it is there.
The way I see this, whites are saying, “we aren’t racist nothing was meant by this, trust us.” but blacks aren’t seeing why they have to be the ones to extend the trust without whites doing anything to earn it or give any reason to believe in them. The fact that blacks are an AFTERTHOUGHT at a lunch in HARLEM while munching on SOUL FOOD doesn’t exactly inspire trust.
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Well, it appears that they are relying on a very old script that is often used by others in similar situations. It’s like only the faces change but the arguments remain the same.
I wasn’t sure exactly who was invited as I’ve been following discussions in various places, but I’ve read how it was pointed out that we invited so-and-so and he’s this(insert ethnic or racial group) and that kind of supports the contention that at least those individuals are in that context, treated as tokens being used as shields against well-deserved criticism against White liberal bloggers for not being more racially diverse and inclusive. I wonder how they would have been treated at the meeting if they had attended and how anything they said at the meeting would have been viewed by these same people who are using them in this way? What if they had said the “wrong” thing?
But I’m a tiny blog person and I’m not familiar with the Big Boys or Girls of Blogging and I feel even less inclined to visit their sites after witnessing their behavior. Big clearly doesn’t necessarily mean better. For one thing, their heads need to deflate a bit.
Alex, your use of your second analogy to bolster the defense of your first(flawed) analogy is in itself, flawed. Do you truly understand the underpinnings of either situation? If you did, you wouldn’t associate the two together. For one thing, comparing a dynamic which is emphasized over an action, to a situation where there’s an action and an underlying dynamic is flawed. Though I agree with you about comparing animals with people.
I agreed with Denise. I’ve found that criticisms and disagreements to the points she has raised have also been used in situations where Whites disagree with the inclusion of a Black Studies progam, Chicano Studies, or Ethnic studies programs in university curricula as well as arguments against designating months of the year as “Black History month” and “Women’s history” month.
These arguments are the essence of expressing ones racial and/or gender privilage in my opinion because the people who make them can ignore, consciously or otherwise, the fact that university curricula in general(whether it’s history, sociologly, literature, psychology, literature, or even “women’s studies” for example) is geared towards the perspectives and POVs of Whites, usually White men. The creation of ethnic studies programs(either collectively or individually) and women’s studies(ditto) was in part done to address the White supremacism and patriarchal or at least dominance of these perspectives in these academic disciplines. The creation of the months to celebrate different historical perspectives probably had similar roots. The existance of these things do not define that men of color and women have privilage over Whites or that racism and sexism are over, but illuminate that racism and sexism still exist and that members of these groups are at a disadvantage, due to the inequalities caused by institutional racism and sexism as it pertains to education.
Not to mention, that these programs and their courses are still considered electives, not requirements like the so-called “general” classes which still focus on the White male perspective. Any attempts to require that White students take at least one of the “other” classes is nearly always met with howls of protest and reverse this and that and more than a few tantrums voiced in the university newspaper. Again racial and gender privilage at work.
I am bit confused, as usual ;) My readings of various blogs suggest that I would be acting in a very offensive manner if I referred to a “black point of view”. in fact I have read a lot of stuff that talks about how no one (or 2, or 3, or ___) particular person–usually POC in this context–can be expected to represent anything. Even THINKING that someone (or a small group of someones) is representative of their group based on their race is an indicator of racism.
So how come it’s OK to talk about a “black point of view” in this context? Is this one of those terms that’s OK and acceptable only when raised/used by POC?
Obviously this question doesn’t go to the “why were more POC not invited” issue. But it does address the “no black point of view was heard” a bit: what would that voice be? Can only blacks have a black point of view; can only blacks represent blacks? Can only whites represent whites? Why is it OK at all to assume that any POC bloggers would bring a different point of view merely because they happen to be POC?
I think this is what Alex is getting at. Or maybe not. For me, it’s confusing to figure out how to both acknowledge and respect the reality that many groups of people (POC and not) have their own distinct and often fairly identifiable political issues based on group membership, and ALSO to acknowledge and respect the fact that I’m not supposed to assume the preceding is true.
Radfem,
Are you aware who the “token” invitees were? Are you aware that one of them runs the most powerful and most heavily traffic’d poli-blogs in existence? And Oliver Willis is a huge big name blogger as well. I don’t think either of them got invites out of “Oh, we should have a black blogger and a hispanic blogger.”
What is noticeable about both of them is that they are non-white bloggers who have huge white audiences and who basically never talk about race (and who mostly talk about race from a specifically anti-identity politics position when they do). That isn’t why they got the invites, but it is how they got to be where they are. There are people of color amongst the top tier poli-bloggers, but I don’t think there are any people of color who talk much about race among the top poli-bloggers. The overwhelmingly white readership and fellow bloggers determine who becomes the top blogger, and the overwhelmingly white readership and fellow bloggers overwhelmingly don’t want to talk about race.
Notably, Kos is both one of the two people of color invited, and one of the gatekeepers of the Don’t-talk-about-race-poli-blogosphere (whose response to this dustup was to delinked CultureKitchen).
Like I said, I’m not privy to a lot of what goes on in the “big” blogsphere. And from what I’ve seen with some of those sites, I don’t think that’s something I’ll lose much sleep over. I actually didn’t like at all the attention my blog got last year. I don’t think I could handle being a “big” blogger, lol.
And I didn’t call them or anyone else tokens. I just read comments refering to “this Latino”(who might have been Kos) and that person of “Lebanese decent” and others on other sites and questioned whether or not others viewed them that way, based on these comments because these comments appeared to be used by some individuals to shield themselves from well-deserved criticism about the lack of racial diversity and inclusiveness at this particular event, which purportedly was to be representative of the “liberal blogsphere”. Not too much different from the “I have a black friend” defense.
Just because they don’t talk about race with “huge white audiences” doesn’t mean they don’t talk about race.
That aside, so, the two bloggers who did get invites are those who don’t discuss race on their sites to huge White audiences? Hmm. So was it a matter of the meeting organizers really not knowing people to invite or choosing only to invite individuals who would not be assumed at least in their presense to discuss issues from a perspective based at least in part on their racial identities unless it was in a context they were comfortable with? How are you sure that’s not why they got the invites, along with being “who they are”? I’m asking this not knowing much about these bloggers(or any of them for that matter) but because some of the behavior shown by those who are defending the organizers of the luncheon and the tepid(to say the least) excuses of some of those directly involved, causes me to ask questions like these. I’m pretty cynical in this area at this point.
I’ve seen similar scenarios play out in other arenas, when it comes to inviting people particularly people of color to speak, appear on panels, etc. Even(actually especially) on panels on race such as “race relations”, organizers so often do not want panelists who will actually discuss race and racism in ways that Whites are not comfortable with. Still, their presumptions and their choices of panelists and speakers based on these presumptions are often wrong, because they do not know the people they invite as well as they assume they do. Things sometimes get interesting, maybe heated. People may disagree but there’s still respect there, everyone gets heard and that seems to panic the organizers(Quick, call the USDOJ Community Relations Division!) much more than the panels where the more racist dynamics play out. To them, those are “safer”.
There was a difficult, but very much needed dialogue on hate crimes by White Supremacist gangs in one city neighborhood. Yes, it got heated(White defenses didn’t want to come down) but it was a good start and the people who participated thought so and wanted to continue the dialogue, which should have been respected and supported, certainly by civic leadership. Sometimes that’s how it starts and becomes something better. Not in this case. The mayor sent out this letter to the media decrying the dialogue by claiming that it was not representative of that particular “good”(if you like racist epithats, antisemitism, Whites nearly rioting over naming a high school after MLK, jr. and undocumented immigrants from Central America getting beaten up by racist skinheads) neighborhood.
But anytime you call the mayor on his racism, he creates another celebration of multiculturalism festival. That’s his solution, or rather his diversionary tactic.
I’ve seen it in jury selection for criminal trials by prosecutors where there’s a “one Black/Latino juror” rule and don’t put two of either on, especially ones from this, this or that background because they will use their perspectives and experiences to shift the dynamics of jury deliberations outside of our favor(Prosecutors are so filled with racial and racist perceptions, among that being that jurors of color will issue blanket acquittals to every defendant in their race(though some defense attorneys believe this too) or ethnic group, it would fill a whole blog to list them all) and other contexts.
I agree with them not wanting to discuss race. But why does “big” have to equal “top”? To whom? Why do Whites get to decide what is “big” and what is “tops” in the blogsphere, not to mention everything else?(This is rhetorical)
Maybe there are other opinions out there of which blogs fill those positions. Which ones are “tops”, including in the “liberal blogsphere”.
There is always this assumption that if it has the stamp of approval by Whites especially lots of us then it’s “tops” and legitimized as such in a way that might be skewed in its perception. It’s terrible in my opinion that this is the way the blogsphere is apparently ruled, because the most amazing blogs I’ve seen out there are smaller blogs, by people of different ethnicities, races, sexual orientations and ableness that do not address these issues in ways that are tailored for the consumption of the majority of Whites and these blogs do not cater to our comfort levels. Many of which may be listed on other blogs but wouldn’t be classified as “top” blogs by the criteria which apparently determines which blogs are at the top of the heap and which are not. Why would they, when you consider how these same dialogues are played out IRL or on other internet venues? I guess the “liberal blogsphere” like the progressive movements mirror the same society it(sort of) protests against.
Above all, never underestimate the power of even the smaller blogs, many of which are written from the mind, heart and the gut, and not to appease or work one’s way into the favoritism of a political party, leader or philosophy(not that all “big” blogs are, but some appear to be). I think what Heart said about this in her post, in terms of the power of grass-roots management is when they remain true to themselves is very true in those movements and I think in the blogsphere as well.
Sailorman,
That there is no “Black Point of View” does not mean that people’s point of view is not influenced by their experience of race. Everyone’s point of view is influenced by their experience of race, and the experience of race of a black person is going to be very different from the experience of race of a white person (for example).
I don’t think this is what is expected of you (it isn’t what I would expect of you). It isn’t that I should pretend that my own particular racist views would be as likely to be found in a Black person or a Latino, it is that I shouldn’t assume that my own particular racist views are the “White Point of View.” Recognizing that Kos’s views on race and Brownfemipower’s (picking at random) views on race differ (and that neither of them has the “Hispanic Point of View”) does not require claiming that race has no influence on viewpoint, nor does it mean that nothing is lost by excluding Hispanic people from the elite of the democratic activist blogosphere (which I will call eDAB). It does help to explain why saying, “What do you mean excluding Hispanic people from the eDAB? Kos is Hispanic!” is not an answer, and also why I jokingly answered 3 to your rhetorical quota question (although 7 would be a better answer).
Ooops,
this
should read “the majority of people who are members of the groups which enjoy privilage in those different identity groups, or something worded in a way that makes better sense. :0
radfem,
Total agreement on everything you say (although you did say tokens).
The idea of someone in a political campaign inviting Kos to a political event out of a desire for a token Hispanic just struck me as funny (there’s no reason you’d know, but Kos is hugely powerful in the political blogosphere, particularly the Democratic activist blogosphere (DAP as I’ve decided to call it), with a substantial influence on the flow of hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions being really the least of his powers – Hillary’s campaign invited Kos because if Kos decided to lay off of Hillary, it would be a huge boost to her influence in the DAP. I doubt it would have that much more effect on her influence in specifically Hispanic democratic party activist sphere.
The eDAP (the elite members of the DAP) aren’t important because they’re valuable, or because they write the most incisive material. When I say they are the top bloggers, I don’t mean that they write the most interesting or meaningful posts. They aren’t important because everyone loves them (most of the people on the list of 20, I’d never heard of). They are important because they are a growing power within one of the two major political parties. The problem with their being overwhelmingly white and exclusionary towards anyone who is willing to talk about race in front of the overwhelmingly white mass of blog readers and fellow bloggers is specifically a problem of talk about race that isn’t comfortable for whites being shut out of an expanding aspect of the American political process.
One of the best things about the blogosphere is the extent to which there isn’t really a rulership, and the concept of top only has meaning in very specific contexts. Important stuff of all different sorts gets discussed all over the blogosphere, with varying sizes and compositions of readership.
One of the worst things is that the big readership blogs have a huge control over the flow of readers to smaller blogs, both the ability to exclude, and the ability to inundate with hostile readers (as TRex’s “I’m going to make you famous,” comment implicitly threatened).
And some blogs also have developed a form of access to real world political power. The extent to which these blogs are very dominated by whites, and the extent that they are hostile to talking about race are both problems of political power.
Yes, I did…here.
My intent was not to label anyone a “token”, so I do apologize. What I was trying to address was whether or not the behavior shown by some others at other sites means that is how people are being treated in that context, which is why I asked some questions about it. When I see individuals who are people of color clearly used as shields when and where Whites are trying to deflect well-deserved criticism of not being racially diverse or inclusive in discussions that purportedly represent the “liberal blogsphere” which I assume is supposed to be different from the “liberal White blogsphere, my cynicism starts to show. A flag goes up so to speak. Why else do these individuals need to be used in this fashion, with name first, then ethnic or racial breakdown(including whether or not they are “partly” a member of a racial or ethnic group)?
Only I’m not sure it would be any more comfortable for Whites that weren’t shut out of the American political process. In fact, I would guess it would become less comfortable for them to do so, because this political process doesn’t support the existance of that type of dialogue either and neither does either of those two political parties. Heart, I think in her post here, provided some reasons why that might be so. The closer people get into the power structure, the more quiet they become about the things that really matter.
This can also be due to the racism and sexism that exists IRL being part and parcel of what happens in the blogsphere. That’s what I see, a system in place that mirrors that of the society some of these same folks are supposedly criticizing for these same problems and purportedly trying to change(only apparently, it’s all the Republicans’ fault we have these problems). Exclusion based on race and gender occur in real life as does “gang piling” by those who enjoy racial and/or gender privilage against anyone who calls them on it like they do on the Web. That includes inside many progressive movements. That includes inside many liberal movements. I think the blogsphere reflects that, as much as the goal might have been to create an alternative reality.
The “problem” you mention here is also a “problem” with both of those two political parties, as well. Neither speak to many of the people they are supposed to be speaking for.
It mirrors society as a form of media and is thus part and parcel of living in a racist society. It’s not the problem in itself; society’s the problem.
Oliver Willis is a great blogger?
Hmmmmmm… let’s go to the sitemeter on that one…
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s17oliverwill&r=33
There are plenty of other black bloggers. Surely Daou could have done better than to offer up one seat to a guy who blogs on Brock’s dime at Media Matters…oh that’s right…. Daou is connected there too….that is when he’s not working for Hillary…. What an insider’s joke… no wonder we can’t win elections.
And these gems from Willis:
“For the record, I am black.”
“If President Clinton wanted to have lunch with 25 white males, who cares?”
Well, for the record, I am white and I care.
[Note from Amp – Michael didn’t realize his first post was in moderation, so he rewrote and submitted a post a second time. Then he emailed me, after realizing what was going on, and apologized for the double-post. But since the two posts are entirely alike, I let both posts go through. In other words, blame me for the double-post, not Michael. –Amp]
Oliver Willis may not care if he was there or not or if there were other people of color there, but from the looks of it, I wouldn’t say his messages have been resonating all that well with too many people out there… http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s17oliverwill&r=33
Then again, he’s the consummate insider. Works for Hilla… — oops I mean Brock — which is of course where Daou is connected….when he’s not working for Hillary…. In fact… look at all the Brock connections up there…. I’m hoping that Duncan “Atrios” Black had the good sense to try and hide his face rather than it just being that he got blocked. You know him, the blog that is in no way connected to Media Matters — well aside from the fact that they pay him.
Some others in that photo have interesting histories as well… One of them has taken to calling grown women “girls” and one of them worked for one of the right’s most heinous figures.
Ahhhhh…. politics such strange bedfellows….
Can I make a point in this conversation? Do I have to talk about race just because I am a blatina?
My criticism is not that they didn’t invite POC to “talk about race”. What is that anyway? The point of my post is the myopia. They could not go beyond one POC blogger who couldn’t make it to find other POC to talk about policy, the state of the Democratic party and the coming elections.
THAT’S my criticism.
RadFem,
Afronetizen has a good post about that at Personal Democracy Forum
http://www.personaldemocracy.com/node/1007
Oh certainly, I don’t think we’re disagreeing.
I think (and I doubt you disagree, I don’t mean to be arguing, just trying to explain what I was trying to say) that, like anything else, the blogosphere is not merely a perfect mirror of society. I was trying to point out some of the features of the blogosphere that cause societal racism to play out in the particular ways it does within the blogosphere. The blogosphere operates by a different mix of mass action and individualism than the outside world, or even than other online communities do. The specifics of how and why societial racism gets played out and mirrored as it does within the blogosphere seems to me an important issue. The specific solutions to specific problems within the blogosphere depend on an understanding of how the blogosphere works. Implementing solutions to specific problems likewise requires that specific understanding. I’m not saying anything new or groundbreaking, and certainly not saying something that everyone here doesn’t already understand, but I thought I’d make clear that that was the basis on which my comments are grounded.
Also,
I think you misread me (easy enough as that was a mess of a sentence). I meant to say that ” talk (about race that isn’t comfortable for whites) being shut out of an expanding aspect of the American political process,” not “talk (about race that isn’t comfortable (for whites being shut out etc)).” I’d probably agree that (all else being equal) talk about race is less comfortable for whites who are involved in the political process of the two parties than for those outside. In fact, in this case, it is specifically the whites who are involved in the political process (eDAB and their readers/commentors) who decide which talk about race gets excluded (the kind that makes them uncomfortable). Folks on sites like Kos are much more comfortable talking about how Senator Allen from Virginia is a racist (just short of the sheet wearing kind), or highlighting the racism in the response to Katrina than they are talking about meaningful racial integration in either their party or their online communities. Within the EDABs, people who espouse an “Oh, the thing I like about blogs is that I don’t know anyone’s race or sex. Why do we have to talk about race at all?” position mostly seemed to be viewed as reasonable rather than disingenuous.
This is a false dichotomy. The reality of individual differences does not preclude recognizing widely-shared attitudes and beliefs when it’s appropriate to do so. Obviously, it’s possible to overstate both (similar to the dual error of either pretending that all Christians think alike or taking the reality of differences at the individual level to mean that “Christianity” means nothing whatsoever). Life is complicated that way.
If I ever accuse a white person of glib stereotyping, it’s likely to be because I simply feel that they are overstating the degree of uniformity among African-Americans, not that I think that any and all generalizations are out-of-bounds. There are certain “points of view,” such as the belief that American society is infected by racism and that this impacts the life chances of black people in concrete and measurable ways, that have achieved something close to normative status among those groups that hold them, and it’s fair to acknowledge that. No idea can boast universal assent, but certain ideas do pay their way over time, such that they command greater respect than the average notion. The reality of racism in America, and the need for collective action to eradicate it, is one such idea for black people.
Liza,
No, certainly, you don’t have to “talk about race.” If I gave the impression that that was what I meant, I apologize.
And I didn’t mean that they should have invited POC to the lunch to “talk about race.” And I don’t even think that Daou necessarily shyed away from inviting POC bloggers who do “talk about race” on their blogs. But I think that the white progressive poliblogosphere’s exclusion of bloggers who talk about race in ways that tend to make progressive white people uncomfortable is part of the reason that Daou ended up myopically only inviting one or two POC (didn’t he invite Kos as well as Oliver Willis? Does Kos not count as being a POC?) who tend not to talk about race on their blogs, in ways that make white progressives uncomfortable.
Sorry if the phrase “talk about race” is inept. I pretty much mean exactly what it says, anything that acknowledges race as a category. If you talk about why there weren’t any black bloggers at that lunch, you are talking about race. If you wonder, as Sailorman did, what the relationship between individual point of view and belonging to a particular racial category is, you are talking about race. If you say, “Oh, I don’t even notice what race people are,” you are still talking about race. That’s all I meant. The “… in ways that make progressive white people uncomfortable,” part was supposed to be the more relevant part. “Oh, I don’t notice race,” doesn’t seem to make most white progressives uncomfortable, but “Hey, did you notice that meeting with the President was all white?” clearly does.
Talking about race isn’t something that falls to POC (not just shouldn’t, doesn’t. It is something that whites do all the time as well. I’m sure (people have said as much) that people at that lunch talked about race, but it was only white people doing the talking. In terms of the meeting, as you say, the fact that it was only white people is what matters. In terms of what it says about the poliblogosphere, and the elite Democratic party activist blogs in particular, I think how people tend to feel about particular ways of talking about race (and the way that power operates within blogs) matters a lot in how we got to that meeting being all white. Daou’s myopia isn’t exceptional, and certainly isn’t simply a personal failing.
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Donna, I have considered the fact that racism is based on ignorance. I also understand that the experiences of Sunni and Shia are different. The experiences of all the groups that I listed are obviously going to have their differences. They will also have similarities. Everyone has had some bad experience, in different measure. Everyone has their jokes, anecdotes, stereotypes and misconceptions, again all in different measure. How can anyone measure the relative effect of any of these and decide who has more right to engage in a given activity based upon that measure?
Ampersand said in his post “POC bloggers focus on what actually happened, while white bloggers focus on establishing the purity of people’s hearts.” I have no problem with that statement – that is what is happening here. Ampersand then went on to say “Inclusion is the point; the purity of white people’s hearts shouldn’t be the central issue here.” Would it diminish his point to say “Inclusion is the point; the purity of people’s hearts shouldn’t be the central issue here?” Denise said “The ‘I didn’t mean to’ excuse should be removed from everyone’s vocabulary. Not meaning to do something does not negate the fact that you did it anyway. It does not remove your responsibility. It does not make it OK to do it anyway. And it does not mean you should not work harder to do it right next time.” Yes, exactly. Not that group A or group B should do it right, but that everyone should do it right.
I had read an article a little while back positing (generalization alert!) that one difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals are concerned with “what,” and that conservatives are concerned about “who.” I am definitely in the “what” camp. My impression is that you are telling me is that “who” is doing something makes it impossible to equate “what” they are doing to others doing the same thing. Please correct me if I’m wrong.
Radfem, I believe that you are making the same point about the analogies that I am using. My first and third examples of swapping the terms are flawed because they ignore the inherent inequality of the groups and actions. That history and social dynamic have too great an effect to be left out of the equation. That the harm caused by one group versus another, whether through intent or ignorance, must be an integral part of the discussion. That the response to a wrong can include words or actions that are viewed as right or wrong depending upon who is doing the responding. Again, that “who” matters a great deal. And again, please correct me if I’m wrong.
You see, the problem that I have with “who” arguments is that they open Pandora’s box. President Bush has been making the rounds trying to justify his use of “coercive interrogation” of late. His arguments are essentially all “who” arguments. Since the enemy is so evil, the need to protect the American people so great, that it is his duty to use whatever methods are at his disposal. That these methods somehow don’t rise to the level of torture because it is our government that is using them. C’mon people, we’re the good guys!
I don’t buy that for a second. Using torture is one of the things that makes you evil. However, his arguments have some (dubious) merit. As President, he does have a great responsibility (true). Thousands died, many more have been harmed (also true). The terrorists are perfectly willing to kill innocent people (Oy, where to even start? The statement is true on its face, but I could write a book here and still not adequately describe the different players and grievances, history and dynamic.), and we are interrogating (torturing) the guilty (Trust us, they really, really are! Really!) to prevent this from happening again. Doesn’t this change the balance? If Bush can’t make this argument, is there someone else who could? For me this cuts to the heart of the problem with the “who” argument. In the face of a great injustice, does a bad thing lose its badness? If the use of this argument validates others’ use of it, are you still willing to use it?
Alex,
You are now equating advocating torture with suggesting that Clinton meeting with an all-black group of bloggers would be preferable to an all white group of bloggers Clinton is probably less familiar with the range of Black perspectives than with the range of white perspectives. You are doing so in an earnest and reasonable tone that suggests that you have dereferenced the argument to such a level of abstraction that you don’t notice that that is absurd and offensive. Either that or, as you admit in your apology post, you are arguing with ghosts.
Even ignoring the grotesque absurdity of equating torture with having lunch with an exclusively black group of people, are you unaware that Bush actually possesses the power to torture people and is doing so currently, whereas Denise does not possess the power to enforce all black meetings on politicians, nor did she advocate for forcing such meetings on politicians, nor did she suggest that politicians should only ever meet with black people. She suggested that a meeting between a white politician and a group of black people has the advantage that the diversity of opinions of black people is not something that white politicians encounter on a day to day basis and is something that we all might benefit from white politicians interacting with, while a meeting between a white politician and an all white group does not have the advantage of providing that benefit.
Forget that it acknowledges who people are, and is therefore conservative, and will therefore lead Bush to have people tortured. Forget that at some point in time, you have talked to or heard people whose opinions on race were to close to some sort of black nationalist position for you to agree with them. Look at the position you are actually arguing against.
With all of the ghosts out of the room, is that a position that seems dangerous to you?
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These lunch attendees make me want to holla Kracker A$$ Krackers, and I am white!
Charles S, I’m sorry, but no, no NO! I used that example precisely because it is so utterly and completely different! I was trying to illustrate something I see at work all the time. When business software companies develop their software, they frequently fail to take into account how end users actually use their software. This can cause some very unexpected issues. If a system has 10 users, it can be manageable. If it has 100, you have a problem. If it has 1,000, you have a nightmare. And so I’ll try to make one more attempt to illustrate my point.
The argument that “who” is doing something makes a difference is a tool – a hammer. A hammer isn’t designed to be used with one specific nail, it is used with all kinds of nails big and small, as well as the occaisonal thumb. It doesn’t even have to be used on nails – if you have something that needs an adjustment, grab the hammer and whack away. Once you put it out on the workbench, it can be used by anyone. And in some cases, you will be very unhappy with the results. So I ask my question again: If the use of this argument validates others’ use of it, are you still willing to use it?
And no, I’m not trying to suggest that anyone is a carpenter.
Alex, I don’t think that Ampersand is saying that what is in people’s hearts doesn’t matter at all, he is saying that it isn’t the central issue, and appears to be a diversionary tactic. Think of it this way, I’m a lifeguard too busy flirting to pay attention to the water, a kid drowns. Would saying that I didn’t mean for the kid to die make it any better? What if I held the kid under? The result is the same, but one is negligent homicide and the other is murder.
I think a person’s life experience does count when making charges of racism. I do agree with you that each person is wrong to include everyone of a race/sex/nationality/religion/whatever “other” we are talking about when generalizing, but it’s kind of hard to explain that not all shia are murderous bastards to a sunni who has just had his family decimated by a shia militia…or vice versa explaining to that to a shia who has been tortured under Sadaams sunni regime.
Race is the single most disunifying theme of the collective American experience, a point that has been exploited to great effect by so-called conservative politicians for nearly the entirety of my life. So now, while we argue over the myopia (at best) of Bill Clinton or his minions, those in power are happily codifying torture into our rule of law.
Please don’t see this comment as minimizing the sense of frustration or grievance expressed by poc. I am not poc but know this feeling of being overlooked and diminished when anything important is on the table, usually because my intangibles just don’t jive like the intangibles of some male peer. It sucks.
I try to be an optimist and to look for good: someone who becomes very defensive about their own feelings or failings on race is someone who believes that racism is wrong but can’t admit that they don’t live up to their own ideals. That’s someone you can work with. In my ever so humble opinion on this matter, it’s important, for that reason to keep the discourse open minded and even tempered, and above all, respectful. And that’s why comments such as those of TRex especially infuriated me. They were none of those things, they deepen the wedge that is the tool used by others who share none of those ideals to take us further and further into the darkness.
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What is noticeable about both of them is that they are non-white bloggers who have huge white audiences and who basically never talk about race (and who mostly talk about race from a specifically anti-identity politics position when they do). That isn’t why they got the invites, but it is how they got to be where they are. There are people of color amongst the top tier poli-bloggers, but I don’t think there are any people of color who talk much about race among the top poli-bloggers. The overwhelmingly white readership and fellow bloggers determine who becomes the top blogger, and the overwhelmingly white readership and fellow bloggers overwhelmingly don’t want to talk about race.
Notably, Kos is both one of the two people of color invited, and one of the gatekeepers of the Don’t-talk-about-race-poli-blogosphere (whose response to this dustup was to delinked CultureKitchen).>>
*nod* *nod* *nod*
“We like you fine, as long as you talk in ways that are soothingly familiar. Certainly we don’t care what color your skin is.”
but fuck, by -that- standard Gee Dubya deserved props for hiring Condi. hey, lots of people think so…
And Parachutec (FDL) who’s gay and Latino. He doesn’t talk about race issues. I have enjoyed his passionate writing and thought he was Native American or something.
BD: If you’re going to diss GWB (go right ahead, I hate the man) Condi may not be the best place to start.
If one begins life as a Texas racist, one does not generally transition immediately to an Enlightened Antiracist without going through some transition period, ya know?
That means tokenism. If GWB were to avoid hiring or promoting or appointing any “token blacks” then, well, it’s not as if he’d be running out to find MORE blacks and avoid tokenism. He would (I assume) just hire NO blacks at all.
Whether or not you like GWB in general–and I don’t, at ALL–the reality is that Condi is one of the most powerful black women on the planet. That is not necessarily a bad thing.
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Here’s what I and I think some other people are suggesting:
It’s not a question of people consciously thinking “Keep these people out of the club, muhahahahaha.”
In the case of the big bloggers, what happens is this: they look for and link to (and make friends with) people who remind them of them.
Which in the case of the blogs, mean people who write about pretty much the same shit as they do, and in pretty much the same way.
Some people who aren’t “mainstream” demographically are gonna do this. A lot more, however, aren’t. They’re gonna write about similar issues, perhaps, but also cover some that don’t get covered by the “mainstream” blogs; and they may have a very different take on some of the issues the more “mainstream” folks would like to think there’s more or less consensus about.
This does not mean they aren’t wonderful, brilliant writers, or that they wouldn’t be very valuable contributors to any genuinely liberal-progressive-Democrat-radical-any-goddam-thing-but-what-we-have-now coalition.
But I think that the A-listers (for example) tend to not see it this way; and they can’t or won’t even go this far; they just, you know, don’t feel the need to look any farther afield; or they see someone talking in ways that ring foreign and they immediately glaze over or get defensive. And you know, it tends to come out as “well, they don’t write about IMPORTANT things; they don’t write well; they talk funny.”
Bzzzt. Look again.