Personal disclosure: this guy is my first cousin. Which in no way invalidates what I’m saying below.
OK, so like many of you I’ve done my share of “diversity workshops”. Which were mostly, I have to admit, pretty good — generally because they were long enough (several days) to dig deep; hands-on and interactive; integrated into everyday practice thereafter; and run by extremely patient/knowledgeable workshop facilitators. This is one of the benefits of working in education versus the corporate world; most educators don’t expect to tackle a complex and emotional subject in a quick soundbyte.
That said, I have done some diversity workshops that reached fathomless depths of assitude. There was the one run by a very young, white, self-identified heterosexual and Christian, visibly anxious facilitator who gave me a blank look when I asked a question about privilege. (I didn’t bother asking any more questions after that; spent the rest of the session working on a short story.) There was also the one in which, after a fellow black woman shared a painful and powerful anecdote about being on the receiving end of some blatantly racist treatment as a college student, a white female participant shared her feelings about being so, so sorry “on behalf of white people” and then broke down crying, at which point everyone in the workshop started comforting her. (Except me and the other black women, who shared a deep spiritual eyeroll.) And then there was the diversity workshop that lasted only one hour out of a six-day, 48-hour training session. No matter how good that workshop was, the amount of time devoted to it sent a message on behalf of the trainers: reducing harm to non-privileged people means so much to us that we’re going to spend 2% of our time on it. Go us! (Yes, go. Please. Really.)
These kinds of workshops are a waste of everyone’s time — no, worse. They make the privileged participants feel better about themselves (for completing the workshop) without actually challenging their privilege, and they make the rest of us feel very fucking tired.
But I want to spread the word about the best short anti-racism workshop I’ve now seen: comedian W. Kamau Bell’s “Ending Racism in About an Hour”.
It’s not a comedy show. (As my aunt, Kamau’s mom, has very emphatically informed me.) It’s a solo theatrical performance… which just happens to be funny as hell. Kamau is the latest of a wave of black comedians who do more than merely exaggerate stereotypes and “keep it real”, whateverthehell that means; he openly confronts the issues of power and the status quo, and the LogicFails that allow racism to perpetuate itself. (I’ve been avidly following another comedian who does this too: Elon James White of This Week in Blackness.) Here’s an example of Kamau in action:
In his latest show, Kamau does everything I’ve ever seen in a good anti-racist workshop: he explains privilege and the power dynamics of racism; gives examples of aversive racism, objectification, and stereotyping; and doesn’t pull punches about the life-and-death impact racism has on politics, economics, health care, and more. But he does all of it without ever using the terminology, and without losing his audience. (Yeah, including Angry Black Women.) Well, scratch that — when I attended his performance on Saturday, he mentioned that a white guy once walked out on him, complaining of guilt. But one out of thousands ain’t bad.
Anyway, I’ve said all this to note that Kamau is in New York City this week for a limited run, as part of NYC’s International Fringe Festival. Most of the shows are already done — sorry, but I wanted to see it before I blogged about it, and I’ve been crazy busy lately — but he’s got one last NYC performance coming up on August 29th at 5 p.m. The one I attended was standing-room-only, so you might wanna buy tix early. If you can’t catch him in NYC, though, he’s a regular at the Punch Line in his adopted home of San Francisco (where he’s Best Comedian of 2008 according to SF Weekly).
Oh, yeah — and if you bring a friend of a different race, you get a free gift! (So if you’re stuck being somebody’s Special Black Friend, bring them to this show so you can get something out of it for a change.)
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Entertaining Anti-Racism in About an Hour
It sounds really interesting. (Wish I was in NY or SF). I also wish there was a better clip of him than that one. Out of all the things one could legitimately joke about in regards to Condaleeza Rice…her teeth? And her ugliness? Sorry, skeeves.
Lexie,
Yeah, I realized that after I posted it. In his defense — and I’ll ask him if he even wants me to defend him — the Comedy Central clip was 4 years ago; he’s grown up a lot since then, as I have since I started doing anti-racist blogging for Angry Black Woman. There was a time when the Condie joke wouldn’t have bothered me at all. Still need to work on that aspect of myself, clearly, since it didn’t occur to me that the joke would be problematic in the context of anti-“ism”; can’t believe I didn’t think about that. Sorry. =(
Anyway, have replaced the old clip with a newer one, and one from the actual show. Not sure when/if Alas will update to reflect the revision, so feel free to go to ABW to see it.
I’ve input the video that’s on the ABW site. It should be right now. (Let me know if it isn’t — please email the moderators.)
I agree they are a waste of time. As a white person, I have witnessed similar scenes of white people “apologizing” on behalf of everyone, and hijacking the sympathy — I’ve never done it — but I have wondered, a lot, what IS the proper response? Silence? Sympathy? It seems like any affirmative response is incomplete and received with some degree of cynicism (no doubt justfiied by circumstances). Which has led me to believe that these kinds of workshops aren’t useful. Maybe a good moderator would have been able to step in and make the powerful anecdote part of a more constructive conversation — how do we go forward? what is the proper way to handle a similar confrontation, etc., but most moderators, in my view, are basically hopeless and have no idea how to do that.
Gaaah. It drives me up the wall when people say apologize “on behalf of” white people, or whatever group they happen to be a part of. It always seems so self-aggrandizing. It is a meaningless act that costs nothing and is basically a way of saying, “Look at me! I’m sensitive and compassionate — not like those other bad white people. Please reassure me that I don’t need to feel guilty or bad!” (Yes, I’m white myself, so no one has ever apologized to me on behalf of white people, but men have apologized to me on behalf of the male sex, and it always strikes me as a possibly well-intended but intensely silly and awkward thing to do.) Ugh — and the crying. Don’t even get me started.
Chances are, the purpose of that one-hour workshop was to insulate the sponsors from lawsuits. For the most part, mandatory diversity training programs tend to be useless at best and counterproductive at worst.
@ Laurie. No kidding! I remember one time in fifth grade my class was doing some unti on the Haulocaust and I had someone of German descent tell me she was apologizing on behalf of all germans everywhere. Uncomfortable to say the least.
Thanks, Nojojojo. This was so much better and funny! Now I really wish I could be in NYC. BTW, I do understand about evolving and growing beyond stuff like the Rice jokes. I probably would have not even noticed it about 10 years ago, myself.
one time i got into a conversation in the gym with a couple of people complaining that they receive the most amount of racism from Indian immigrants and they asked me “why do your people hate us so much?”
i responded, with a somewhat glib though essentially accurate; “we hate blacks because we hate ourselves.” then i proceeded to facetiously apologize on behalf of all my people. then we all cracked up.
The purpose of diversity workshops is more for legal protection than for effect.
We had a three-day long diversity training when I was an RA for a university. I can honestly say it was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me as far as realizing the privilege that exists in all parts of the “isms”. Obviously, I came out changed for the experience so perhaps these are like all things – what you put into them is what you get out of them.
Something they tell you in theatre when you’re an extra is to never drop your role – even if you’re not the main character and your family all stayed home, someone is watching you at that moment, even if you’re upstage left right by the curtain. Most likely there was someone besides teary-eyed white lady who was watching and thinking. We all have to start somewhere, and this is at least a chance when done right. I agree that most corporate training is insipid – especially in an hour. But it can be done right.
Sailorman,
I disagree. This is what I meant about the education/corporate-world difference — most diversity workshops in education are actually meant to teach the educators and improve student learning. Which I think is why most of the ones I’ve experienced (and I’d say I’ve been through maybe 10 total, in the 12 years I’ve been working) have been good. I have been through a couple, as I mentioned, which did a crappy job of this, but even then the problem wasn’t that the organizers/college administrators were trying to CYA against lawsuits. It was that the organizers badly underestimated how complex the message was, and its importance, and that showed.
Anyway, to bring this back on topic, Kamau’s performance really worked. Maybe all hour-long workshops should be done by comedians.
The first “diversity training” I got on the job was so terrible it was actually offensive. They showed us a video in which black men were leering sexual harassers, and Latino men had heavy Cheech’n’Chong accents and were hyper-macho homophobes. This long predated the meme, but yeah, FAIL.
Man, as a white male, I must say that if people apologizing “on my behalf” was actually anything but a self-aggrandizing move, I would never have to apologize for anything again in my life. It would have all already been done for me, mostly by people I’ve never even met. Which would be weird, seeing as I’m Canadian, and unnecessary apologies make up a good half of my speaking vocabulary.
Oh, he sounds hysterical AND educational – my favorites. Any chance of a video release?