we don’t need another anti-racism 101

Mai blogs:

i used to be an antiracism trainer for a progressive organization a few years ago.  i was really really good at.

this year i finally realized after a lot of soul searching that teaching white folks how to be good allies is not helpful to anyone.

its like us giving white folks all the correct rhetoric just allows for them to be able to better racists, because they are able to justify their racism using anti-racist rhetoric.

in that they are able to say things like: i realize that such and such is a function of racism and then they continue to do the same fucking thing that they just acknowledged was racist.

[Hat Tip: Restructure]


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37 Responses to we don’t need another anti-racism 101

  1. 1
    FurryCatHerder says:

    Uh, perhaps if they weren’t given a nice comfortable workshop instead of an address of a place to go work for a few hundred hours they’d acquire a better clue?

  2. 2
    PG says:

    FCH,

    I wouldn’t count on people who are doing this against their will in the first place acquiring a clue by being forced to do work in which they don’t believe, instead of sitting through a workshop in which they don’t believe. Talk to some rightwingers about mandatory volunteering/ pro bono work and you’ll see what I mean.

    I had a conservative friend in law school who said there ought to be an open market to fulfill the 40 hour pro bono requirement, such that people who didn’t want to do that work could use the money from their non-public-interest summer jobs to pay people who enjoyed public interest to fulfill the hours. He was convinced that it was clear from the lack of such an arrangement that the law school didn’t really care about maximizing the quality and quantity of legal aid to the community. (Quality because someone who spends a whole semester working immigration appeals is going to be a lot more useful than someone who’s just there for a single 9-5 M-F.)

    I tried to explain that the goal is not ONLY to provide services, but also to instill in us a sense of responsibility to the community and a connection with the people who needed our help. It was like I was speaking Martian.

    There might be some people who are rightwing just out of total ignorance and exposure to lives different from their own will shake them out of it, but I’m afraid most liberals tend to optimistically overestimate this. My friend did his clinic and pro bono hours helping tenants who were being evicted, and the experience just heightened his loathing of rent control and gave him a new sympathy for landlords. If you start from a worldview of “Most people get what they deserve,” it’s really difficult not to see someone’s getting evicted for installing a washer-dryer in violation of their rental agreement as “they just got what they deserved.”

  3. 3
    Sailorman says:

    Count me in as being anti-mandatory-pro-bono for law students.

    I do a lot of it myself. But I’d much rather have a law student work elsewhere and contribute money to my organizations, than have a worker who isn’t invested.

    I have met a lot of people who do great things by donating money. I have met a lot of people who do great things by volunteering time. But I don’t think I have ever heard someone say that they learned to love pro bono work because they were made to do it in law school.

    I tried to explain that the goal is not ONLY to provide services, but also to instill in us a sense of responsibility to the community and a connection with the people who needed our help.

    More cynically, I think it is that the schools use that type of thing as serious advertising fodder, and it helps them get status with the credentialing agencies.

  4. 4
    MH says:

    Could not disagree more with the quoted author, though I am sympathetic with the frustration.

  5. 5
    David Schraub says:

    i guess what i am saying is that in my experience if white folks want to be respectful of poc or understand where they are coming from–they dont need a workshop. there are centuries of writing from poc that they can dive into. there are plenty of poc in their neighborhoods and community organizations. when white folks are ready to be anti-racist, when they are ready to turn from facing the center, to facing the margins, and stand with us. we will be here.

    What would this even look like without any theoretical grounding to guide folks?

    I’m trying to imagine how this plays out. There are centuries of writing by poc — but who would the average curious White person know about? I’d guess, they’d pick up Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, and Martin Luther King. Maybe some early W.E.B. Du Bois if they had an academic bent, maybe Malcolm X if they felt radical. Barack Obama might come in today. Clarence Thomas might too. These are all folks that I think should be part of an engagement with Black political thought, but if they are of course a very narrow slice and — more importantly — don’t inherently demarcate a path to a more diverse array of Black political perspectives.

    Any woc? I doubt it — Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman are the mainstream female names, and neither were prolific writers. Any non-Black poc? Again, I’m drawing a blank. This isn’t to say there aren’t spectacularly important non-Black poc and woc writers — just that bell hooks and Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldua aren’t known to the general public (which has to do with how “mainstream” civil rights icons are either tamed once dead or relatively moderate and palatable to the White majority to begin with).

    Put another way, there is no reason to believe that even a White person who genuinely wants to be respectful but also is “flying blind” with nothing but a standard mainstream education and a desire to be a good person would acquire the stuff in your typical anti-racism 101 packet on their own. They won’t know who to read beyond the authors who get attention in the mainstream press. They won’t know how to respectfully interact with the poc in their communities and organizations — how their own preconceptions might blind them, that they don’t have a right to be “taught” by any poc who crosses their path. It is like Eve in the garden, who is expected to understand that disobedience is wrong prior to knowing there is such thing as good and evil.

    The prescription here seems, ironically enough given the rest of the post, to buy into the romantic fallacy that good faith and intentions are going to be sufficient to magically place the curious White person on the right path, and that these intentions will sustain Whites through infinite missteps and stumbles along the way. There’s no reason to think that.

  6. 6
    PG says:

    I’m not sure what we all have in mind about this sort of anti-racism education, BTW. A mandatory workplace training to avoid lawsuits (where there will be a huge spectrum of political sentiment) is both broader and shallower than an antiracism training for a progressive organization (where people presumably are more cohesive in ideology), which is broader and shallower than a summer course about the African American Community (which is how I started reading bell hooks’s work), which is broader and shallower than a sustained study of the conflict between intersectionalist and non-intersectionalist theorists…

  7. 7
    Sailorman says:

    Just occurred to me, mostly because I have been diving into education and literacy issues lately…

    Many people (including putatively-educated ones) do not really have the reading ability or the educational background to get a lot of insight by perusing texts of any kind. Hell, plenty of people can’t even read the NYT any more.

    Moreover, even of those who have the mental ability, there is still a decent segment who can’t do it: They don’t have access to the books, or money for them, or an easy way to get to the library, or time after work to read things. And that’s not even going into the physical issues which might preclude someone from reading.

    It’s an interesting class issue.

  8. 8
    Emily says:

    I think that this –

    They won’t know how to respectfully interact with the poc in their communities and organizations

    is a key part of what Mai’a is rejecting in the linked post. I think the piece argues precisely that you DON’T need the keywords or “theory” in order to respectfully interact with poc in their/your communities. That if you have a basic sense of humility and respect for others, you will do fine and learn as you go. You will step in it/put your foot in your mouth, etc., but you will be humble and respectful and open to the people you are working with who tell you that you’re being disrespectful to them/presumptious/what have you. You will truly LISTEN to them, think about what they’ve said, and broaden your point of view. You will be exposed to new concepts and authors without a “class” but through your connection to actual individual human beings, with whom you form friendships and share interests. You will grow as a person and contribute something tangible to the community at the same time. And you will understand the concepts, whether or not you can throw around the right buzzwords.

  9. 9
    RonF says:

    Two things strike me:

    1) The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago (of which I am a member) requires anyone who is going to take a Diocesean-level position, whether paid or volunteer, to take an anti-racism seminar. It’s turned out to be controversial. Some people think that it’s offensively patronizing and insulting. I don’t know the details; whether or not they think that they are not racists and having to take this presumes they are, or if they have problems with concepts such as “privilege”, or if the people who are giving the training are doing a lousy job.

    2) The poster said:

    people only learn as much as they are willing to learn.

    in that they are able to say things like: i realize that such and such is a function of racism and then they continue to do the same fucking thing that they just acknowledged was racist.

    I do training for the Boy Scouts. We teach people how to run the program. Very often this is not the way it was done when they were Scouts, or when I was a Scout, and for very good reasons, too. Or it’s not the way that they think it should be done. So what happens is that they sit there, they can parrot back to you what you just said, but they don’t practice it when they get back to the kids.

    This, then, seems to me not a specific thing to anti-racism training but to training overall; if you want to learn something and have an intent to conform to what you are being taught, then you’ll get value out of training. But if you are in training solely because you have to be then you’re not going to change what you’re doing regardless of the training, and the training becomes a waste of time and a CYA exercise for management.

  10. 10
    RonF says:

    That if you have a basic sense of humility and respect for others, you will do fine and learn as you go. You will step in it/put your foot in your mouth, etc., but you will be humble and respectful and open to the people you are working with who tell you that you’re being disrespectful to them/presumptious/what have you.

    Like when I was a kid and learned how to choose up sides with the “Eeeny, meeny, miney, mo, catch a n—– by the toe, …”. I had no frickin’ clue what the word meant when I was 10, I thought it was a nonsense word like when the girls would dance and chant “Ring around the rosie, …” I learned different later on, of course, but imagine if I had used the word in certain contexts. So if I’m to be asked to be willing to step in it once in a while, the flip side is that people have to be willing to listen to me step in it and deal with it in a reasonable fashion. That puts us back to dealing in intentions, though, which this author is not all that enthusiastic about.

  11. 11
    PG says:

    Emily,

    I think some education is a prereq to knowing WHY you should be “humble and respectful and open to the people you are working with who tell you that you’re being disrespectful to them/presumptuous/what have you.” It’s not as though highly-privileged white males don’t go around expressing upset at other people’s being disrespectful or presumptuous to said privileged white males. You have to have some understanding of history and the current disparities in our country to have a clue as to why some people’s assertions that they are being disrespected are more worthy of serious consideration than other people’s are, or else you’ll be nodding at the white guy who’s bitching about “reverse racism” and “male bashing” and the good Lord only knows what else.

    It’s that difference between intent and result that Mai’a notes in her post: even if you have the same intent in what you say to two people, the difference in how it affects them due to different backgrounds matters and is something of which you should be aware.

    I hadn’t really thought about this stuff in any depth until my junior and senior year of high school. That was a big period of Oh, Wow: I researched affirmative action for a class project, and then read Jesse Jackson’s “Legal Lynching” and Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man,” at the same time that I was spending my first summer away from family and on my own in an urban area (Boston). I’d of course been aware of racism before (if nothing else, that directed at my own family in a small town), but I’d never thought about systemic, institutionalized racism. And then the next summer the father of one of my little sister’s classmates was murdered in a hate crime, so it was a quick learning curve for me that what I’d briefly studied in history class had continuing resonance.

    Maybe if you’re raised in progressive circles you hear about all this from the people around you and don’t need book-learnin’ for it, but I don’t think that’s true for or accessible to everyone.

  12. 12
    Doorshut says:

    As a white literature student currently taking an African American literature class, I can only roll my eyes at the idea that the best way to teach white people to not be racist is having them read. There is so much that an unaided person is not going to get, because of an incomplete understanding of history and the general difficulty of reading literature critically. They might get the basics of it, but even as a literature student and as someone who came from a great high school that actually taught history in depth, I find myself putting off the assigned readings until after the lecture, because I miss so much of the meaning and significance of what I’m reading that it’s next to pointless. Expecting the manager of a retail store to pick up The Norton Anthology of African American Literature and dedicated the time to get anything out of it, without help, is unreasonable and going to yield worse results than a workshop.

    Telling people to go out and interact with PoC isn’t going to help, either. Some of the most racist people I know have more PoC friends than the ones who work tirelessly to minimize their racism. I’ve seen the same person who uses the N word and talks about how it’s not their fault PoC can’t bring themselves out of poverty go out to a black church and spend the day with their new friends.

    Of course, there’s no quick and easy solution outside of this–but I think this is more due to people being unwilling to accept subtle racism and their own prejudices than the inherent failings of attempting to teach them.

  13. 13
    Sailorman says:

    Who are the experts about the process of changing racial beliefs?

    I’m not trying to sound like ‘student’ by asking that.

    But while it seems reasonably clear that POC should be the primary arbiters of the goals of any anti-racist work, does that also mean they should be the arbiters of the process of any anti-racist work?

    This post seems to be in the general category of posts in which individuals (of any color) attempt to capture authority both for the goals and the process of something. I don’t really agree with that level of control for anyone.

  14. 14
    Mandolin says:

    I interpreted this as applying to the internet, and various attempts made by black activists (as trans activists, female activists, etc) to post material that will answer basic questions.

    I’m troubled by this post. I certainly understand the anger and frustration. I simply hope that it is slightly more pessimistic than reality.

    Although, you know, I *do* think that sincere allies will find a way to join the cause they’d like to ally with even if they don’t have specific 101 work to read. But at the same time 101 posts can be useful within the community — they often articulate basic ideas that feminists, antiracists, etc, may not have been able to put very clear, simple words to. I know Amp has put up several posts where he used a metaphor that helped to clarify a concept for a lot of feminists in their own minds. I think that’s useful. (It’s possible that this doesn’t work that way for antiracism and poc, but I do think I’ve seen that dynamic around, say, Tempest’s blog.)

    Anyway, conflicted here.

  15. 15
    David Schraub says:

    What PG said. And I do understand the frustration here — though sometimes I wonder how we mediate between “you’re abusing these theories to perpetuate rather than undermine racism” and “these theories aren’t deterministic and don’t necessarily support your and only your interpretation of what anti-racist politics means.”

    Anyway, in a society as saturated with racism as ours is, I’m skeptical that the generic good intentions of being a nice guy is going to be sufficient to accord actual respect and dignity to poc. To take one example, the whole treating poc-as-teachers thing is done almost exclusively by well-intentioned but uneducated White persons — it is precisely the sort of misstep we’re likely to see a lot more of with the “throw them in the pool” approach.

  16. 16
    nojojojo says:

    Sailorman @ 13:

    PoC don’t have a choice about arbiting the process of anti-racism. It falls on us either way — in 101 encounters, white people look to us to explain things to them, and in… 201-plus? encounters we’re forced to explain, often forcefully because someone is flailing about inflicting damage, why the 101-level response to something isn’t always sufficient. This happens whenever a PoC enters an anti-racist conversation and identifies him/herself as such; I’ve seen the pattern often enough to realize it happens every time, all the time. The only real choice PoC have, IMO, is to either accept the role of teacher/example/role model/object that gets pressed upon them, or withdraw from the conversation entirely and let the white people talk amongst themselves. Which is problematic in and of itself.

    Segue here to Mandolin —

    Thing is, this withdrawal inevitably becomes necessary for the PoC anti-racist’s sanity. Which is why you’ve seen 101 posts appear often on ABW, yes — but it’s also why there are sometimes long stretches of silence between clusters of posts. We’ve got three regular bloggers and a half-dozen guest bloggers, and there are times when all of us just get so damn worn out that we go silent. Right now I think most of us are recovering from RaceFail — which started as a 101-level conversation, note.

    So you’re right; Racism 101 discussions are great and necessary for both the clueless and the clued-in. But they take a toll — a heavy one — on those who are forced into the role of “teacher” in those discussions. It remains to be seen, IMO, whether the benefits are worth that price. Sounds like the OP has concluded that the benefit is not worth the price.

  17. 17
    Dianne says:

    I’m sorry. My first thought after reading this clip involved designing a clinical trial to determine if white people acted more or less racist after receiving anti-racism training. Because there are always going to be white people who are dumb, lazy, or complete jerks and won’t get anything out of anti-racism training but maybe some vocabulary to help them hide their racism. But is that true for all or most white people who undergo anti-racism training? Not clear to me. (And if it is true, is the conclusion “it’s hopeless, white people will never be good allies” or “we need better methods to teach people how to unlearn racism and learn cultural sensitivity”?)

  18. 18
    PG says:

    nojojo,

    This happens whenever a PoC enters an anti-racist conversation and identifies him/herself as such; I’ve seen the pattern often enough to realize it happens every time, all the time.

    What do you think are the possibilities of a PoC not identifying herself as such in entering an anti-racist conversation online? It seems like the internet affords the possibility to say some things without having them get attached to assumptions about one’s identity. (I blog semi-anonymously and have gotten attacked as presumptively trans — when I defended trans rights — and also as presumptively white and presumptively male when I didn’t meet someone’s standards of solidarity with PoC or with women.) If the PoC doesn’t say “Hi, I’m Vietnamese,” it seems like that would allow some space to talk without being expected from the get-go to be the teacher/example/role model/object.

    On the other hand, I can see why it would be damaging for people who are particularly committed to speaking through their identity as a PoC (or woman, or trans-person) online to preserve a mask that will default them as a white cis-male. I’m just wondering if an occasional anonymity is another way to avoid the pressure of being the teacher; to stay in the conversation without having to be its goddamn facilitator.

  19. 19
    nojojojo says:

    PG,

    It seems like the internet affords the possibility to say some things without having them get attached to assumptions about one’s identity.

    Up to a point. But then — particularly in 101 discussions — what usually happens is that the anti-racist starts getting challenged for the relevance or “authenticity” of her views, once she speaks out. At that point either the anti-racist has to explain her racial identity, or if she continues to try and conceal it, people get suspicious and start attacking her for that. It’s true that an anti-racist’s race should not matter; she should be able to speak against racist acts or speech regardless of her background, and her background is nobody’s business. But it’s a common tactic of racism defenders to shift the goalposts, and hiding one’s identity leaves a clear opening for this attack. The trustworthiness/disingenuousness of the anti-racist becomes the focus of the convo, rather than racism. Easier to head that off at the pass by just saying what you are from the get-go.

    (I see this happen often to white anti-racists, too — people assume from their views that they’re a PoC, and when they’re pushed into revealing that they’re white, this is treated as a deliberate deception/attempt to condescend/a sign of the anti-racist’s “internalized self-hate” or white guilt, blah blah blah. Again, a goalpost-shift.)

  20. 20
    Elizabeth Anne says:

    Then there’s the problem of geography. I’ve spent most of my young life living in places where the non-white population was incredibly small. So how, exactly, are people living in small town Iowa supposed to form relationships with PoC? And how does one go about that? Go up to the one black family in town and ask to be their friends? Relationships that are meaningful and capable of altering the way people think have to be organic.

  21. 21
    PG says:

    nojojojo,

    Yeah, I know from experience that especially where people feel like they have to defend themselves from a charge of racism (even if no one is accusing them personally of being racist), pointing out that basing your judgment of the worth of an argument on the identity of the arguer is the ad hominem fallacy, won’t get very far. It’s a pity, because while I think the internet on the one hand creates some valuable opportunities for close connection — I first got to know my husband through blogging* — it also creates a heretofore inaccessible possibility of evaluating people’s words with the minimum of baggage attached about who the speaker is.

    * Though we didn’t have the Ann Althouse-type romance. We met IRL incidentally because we ended up being at the same grad school, and then dated for a couple of years. We’d met each other’s families and friends and lived together for a summer before getting engaged. And then were engaged for nearly two years.

  22. 22
    Mandolin says:

    Thing is, this withdrawal inevitably becomes necessary for the PoC anti-racist’s sanity. Which is why you’ve seen 101 posts appear often on ABW, yes — but it’s also why there are sometimes long stretches of silence between clusters of posts. We’ve got three regular bloggers and a half-dozen guest bloggers, and there are times when all of us just get so damn worn out that we go silent. Right now I think most of us are recovering from RaceFail — which started as a 101-level conversation, note.

    So you’re right; Racism 101 discussions are great and necessary for both the clueless and the clued-in. But they take a toll — a heavy one — on those who are forced into the role of “teacher” in those discussions. It remains to be seen, IMO, whether the benefits are worth that price. Sounds like the OP has concluded that the benefit is not worth the price.

    Oh, absolutely.

    I also think this is true of a lot of 101 work (I’m thinking here particularly of trans issues).

    I think a valuable role of allies can be to try to educate other white people (or whatever the normative axis is) on the 101 issues so that POC can try to save their energy. I try to do that (particularly in situations like workshops where a story with racist implications has been submitted, and I can see that the people of color in the class are already exhausted before the conversation begins at the thought of arguing — as am I, frankly, but I know that the issue will have less soul-destroying ramifications for me), but I know there are more situations in which I could.

  23. 23
    Emily says:

    Neither the original post nor I were suggesting that “the generic good intentions of being a nice guy is going to be sufficient to accord actual respect and dignity to poc.” There is a REASON that I highlighted the post’s mention of humility.

    Also, I read the initial post to be saying – 1) people who WANT to be allies, who are committed to being allies, will seek out organizations to participate in, and will get along OK without a bunch of terminology floating around in their heads. Because they will NOT rest just on their “good intentions” but have actual humility and a respect for the people they work with. 2) People who DON’T actually want to be allies (whether they say they do or explicitly say they don’t)will only use the language taught in anti-racist seminars to keep doing what they’re already doing, but use fancy anti-racist language to argue they’re doing something else.

    I actually think that there is a place for theoretical learning. But I also think that in some ways it is an “easy out” for white people, who get to feel like they’re all knowledgeable and allies, but don’t go out into the community and DO anything useful. I see a lot of WOC bloggers saying that making direct contributions to your community is more important than sitting around theorizing all day. And if you can feel good about yourself as an ally, without doing anything concrete to make changes in your real life world – are you really doing anything?

    @ PG – If I want to be an ally of privileged white males who think they’re not privileged and disrespected, then I would do well to be humble and respect and listen to them and try to understand their viewpoint. The argument about humility and respect being more important than theoretical concepts only applies to people who actually WANT to be allies, and to the people they want to ally themselves with.

  24. 24
    PG says:

    @ PG – If I want to be an ally of privileged white males who think they’re not privileged and disrespected, then I would do well to be humble and respect and listen to them and try to understand their viewpoint. The argument about humility and respect being more important than theoretical concepts only applies to people who actually WANT to be allies, and to the people they want to ally themselves with.

    Sure, but how do you know with whom you should ally in the absence of information to help you decide who deserves your alliance? In the absence of education, the natural human instinct is to ally with those whose interests are the same as yours, and for white people that isn’t obviously PoC (though I think just as feminism liberates men, anti-racism liberates whites — but it’s not the way the debate’s usually constructed).

  25. 25
    Emily says:

    I think people decide who to ally themselves with in various different ways. Someone might find the topic through a college course, and another person might find it through an activist co-worker who he/she becomes friends with. Someone might start out in a group or activity based on their own identity and get to know people who are also involved in groups with a different primary focus. Someone might have an identification with “the underdog” for any number of reasons, and that might be their basis for deciding who to ally with.

    I am certainly not suggesting that information be purposefully made UNAVAILABLE or hard to get. And the original post and comments talk about the fact that this information IS out there for people to read and interact with if they’re interested. The question I saw presented by the original post, was whether organized, taught diversity training classes/seminars are really a particularly useful way to engage people.

    I guess it’s possible that didactic education and “class” type situations influence who people identify with, but it doesn’t intuitively make sense to me. I think you have the inclination/interest first, and then seek out information on how to best go about doing it. And you may get better information from actually doing something than from reading theory. Again, I’m not saying that classes shouldn’t exist in any form for any audience. But that also doesn’t mean that “diversity training” is a particularly productive use of anti-racist activists’ time. I don’t know if it is or not, but I think the original author makes some good points about why it’s arguably not. That the people who are interested in being allies will find either the information or the experiences elsewhere, and for the people who aren’t really interested it either does no good or does harm by giving them a new vocabulary to use to obfuscate and hide the ways in which they are failing to be allies.

  26. 26
    PG says:

    That the people who are interested in being allies will find either the information or the experiences elsewhere, and for the people who aren’t really interested it either does no good or does harm by giving them a new vocabulary to use to obfuscate and hide the ways in which they are failing to be allies.

    I’m skeptical of the idea that people either are allies who proactively seek out ways to benefit a particular community, or they’re trying “to obfuscate and hide the ways in which they are failing to be allies.” Most conservatives I know have no desire to do either — they do not feel a moral obligation to be allies to a particular community, especially one defined by race, and in the absence of such obligation also don’t feel the need to hide the fact they’re not allies, any more than I feel the need to hide the fact that I fail to be “an ally of privileged white males who think they’re not privileged and [are being] disrespected.” To bring over a phrase from another thread, I have no problem saying “fuck that shit” re: being an ally to privileged white males, and most conservatives I know say “fuck that shit” to the idea that they’re obligated to be particular allies to PoC. (As opposed to simply being allies of Humans or Americans in general.)

  27. 27
    Sailorman says:

    Riffing of of what PG has said, racism beliefs cover the same spectrum as feminist beliefs. There are folks who aren’t feminist but are nonetheless attuned to some of the more obvious sexism problems. And there are also plenty of people who are racist but are nonetheless attuned to some of the more obvious racism issues.

    “Being a real ally,” with all that it appears to involve, actually seems like a very advanced level of anti-racist activity. If that’s the cutoff you use, few people will meet it.

  28. 28
    Restructure! says:

    PG,

    What do you think are the possibilities of a PoC not identifying herself as such in entering an anti-racist conversation online? It seems like the internet affords the possibility to say some things without having them get attached to assumptions about one’s identity.

    When I enter conversation about race/racism online and I try to hide that I’m not a (cis) white man, I also have to hide a lot of what I know that is relevant to the debate. For example, sometimes (white) people say that all people of race X do Y. If I know that I am of race X and I don’t do Y, or that my sister or mother or cousin of race X don’t do Y, but I want to hide that I am race X, I would have to say “I know a person of race X who doesn’t do Y” which sounds like an imaginary person I made up, especially if I refuse to answer how I know this person. Or, I could lie and say that “I have a friend of race X” when that person is actually me, but that would be pathetic.

  29. 29
    Emily says:

    @PG – well, those conservatives would fall into the category of people for whom the training would do “no good” but perhaps also do “no harm” as they already have no interest in knowing any of this. Though I would suggest it might do harm by giving them additional fodder to make fun of “PC” programs like anti-racist training.

    The original post was about the author leading anti-racist trainings in progressive non-profit organizations. The implication was that at least a group of the people involved in initiating or participating in the training saw themselves as allies, and/or people who wanted to be/become allies. The original post had nothing to do with people who have no interest in being allies and are perfectly willing to say so. That’s not what the post was about, and the reasoning of the post cannot simply be transported into a new situation with a different group of people assumed to be the target audience and then critiqued on that basis.

  30. 30
    PG says:

    Emily,

    I’m not critiquing the reasoning of the post; I was concerned about the binary you seemed to be setting up between either being a proactive anti-racist or attempting to hide one’s failure to be a proactive anti-racist, which as Sailorman notes leaves an awful lot of people out who are not pro-racism.

    If you’re referring solely to people who claim to want to be anti-racist activists, the binary is useful, although I’m still doubtful of how many people claim that it’s really important to them to be anti-racist activists yet actually prefer “to obfuscate and hide the ways in which they are failing to be allies.” Do some progressive organizations fire people who aren’t anti-racist activists?

    I assumed that the training of which Mai’a was speaking were just a more heightened type of the kind of diversity/ sensitivity training that one gets in a multitude of organizations, but which doesn’t require that one either describe how one is being an anti-racist activist or defend oneself for failing to be. Frankly that does sound like a pretty toxic kind of environment.

  31. 32
    Sailorman says:

    Doug,

    You are just looking at the wrong goal. For most workplaces, sensitivity training isn’t designed to actually make people more sensitive. Rather, it is designed to cover the company’s ass when/if someone sues for harassment, discrimination, etc. It’s a legal issue, not a social one.

    This is a common error of belief. It’s also one where the companies play along with the error; the legal-defense aspects don’t work if you actually agree that it is pointless and that you don’t expect employees to listen to it.

    It is true, however, that there is always some backlash from that type of social policy. I see it most obviously with women and the FMLA: Some employers don’t understand FMLA. But once they do, and they understand their obligations, they will do everything they can to hire the minimum number of women, based on fear of pregnancy leave under FMLA. Often, the hiring of women goes down, because following FMLA increases the cost to them to hire women.

  32. 33
    PG says:

    Sailorman,

    I hadn’t heard that about pregnancy and FMLA — why does the FMLA make so much more of a difference in employers’ behavior than the Pregnancy Discrimination Act?

  33. 34
    Sailorman says:

    PG Writes:
    April 1st, 2009 at 6:13 am

    Sailorman,

    I hadn’t heard that about pregnancy and FMLA — why does the FMLA make so much more of a difference in employers’ behavior than the Pregnancy Discrimination Act?

    It probably would not do much, as an incremental change. But most people who don’t follow FMLA are not doing anything they need to; it’s not as if they are following pregnancy act rules either. Since FMLA is now applicable, the discussion focuses on FMLA.

    I have not yet run into anyone who was fully aware of the pre-FMLA rules, who was not also aware of the FMLA rules. And when I run into people who are not aware of (or following) FMLA, they are also not aware of (or following) any previous laws either. Does that make more sense?

  34. 35
    chingona says:

    PG and Sailorman, that’s actually a topic I know a bit about, but I’m going to respond over in the open thread.

  35. 36
    grendelkhan says:

    the problem is that fundamental to white/euro-centric culture is a break between word and action. between theory and practice.

    Never trust those damned shifty blue-eyed devils.

    PG: To bring over a phrase from another thread, I have no problem saying “fuck that shit” re: being an ally to privileged white males, and most conservatives I know say “fuck that shit” to the idea that they’re obligated to be particular allies to PoC.

    This sort of dovetails nicely with the idea that the greatest pillar supporting injustice isn’t active malice, but rather indifference and apathy, sharpened a bit by an aversion to looking closely for things that might upset you. We get this idea that racism is something that you actively do; if it were, the “I had no racist intent!” defense would actually be relevant.

    But if the problem is primarily indifference, then the average perpetrator of racism is one of these people you describe, someone who bears no particular ill will and honestly doesn’t think much about race.

    Then again, racism being at the same time one of the most hideous evils ever to appear on Earth and something that everyone unavoidably does makes it hard to describe exactly what anyone’s moral status or obligations are. But perhaps that question itself reflects the biased idea that all problems have solutions, that all questions have answers, and that there’s some way to do The Right Thing and have everyone come up smelling of kittens and glitter. Because understanding racism involves understanding there are no right answers, the whole board is tilted, and some good metaphor which I can’t find right now, and must be off to lunch.

  36. 37
    Simple Truth says:

    It’s difficult for me to conjoin the ideas that a PoC being a teacher often takes more out of them than they feel it is worth, and the idea in the original post that ultimately the effort isn’t worth it because it arms the racists with excuses to cover up their actions. Doesn’t this leave out the whole intention of the training – to build bridges and understanding where there is none? Granted, one gets discouraged – building bridges is difficult.
    In a sort of related note, I used to work retail. I think anyone else who did (and cared about their job) reaches a saturation point; stupid complaints, messy people, rampant children, being yelled at just for someone else’s edification, “customer is always right”, etc made me reach a point where I hated everyone who came into the store. Customers be damned – they were all entitled pigs who came to abuse me. Needless to say, this is the point where I decided I needed to leave my retail job.
    Perhaps the original poster needs a break from the front lines of the fight for understanding. It’s a hard job that can feel unrewarding, but I’m sure that they made a difference. For every evil customer, there are 100 who you don’t notice, and 1 who you recognize and chat with when they come in.