More on Race and Privilege

i'm not exactly sure of the meandering path that landed me on racialicious reading a post about the politics of hair. normally i stay in my happy little feminist/FA circuit of blog reading, venturing into other -ism blogs only as they relate to the other stuff i'm reading. mostly because it's all too much for me to wrap my head around most days. there's too much for me to process all at once, and i just let the search take me where it seems to want to go. which is probably how i ended up there.

i've been mulling over privilege, again... because it's the hinge that everything seems to be hung on. and it's the thing i have the hardest time seeing in myself. but Latoya Peterson's post about her decision to let her chemically relaxed hair grow out to a natural texture, and the body politics that came along with that, was really eye opening. and i thought, wow i can totally relate to that. that's just like the time i decided not to diet anymore and... then i realized it was nothing like that. yeah, there were body politics involved with that decision. but no one told me i was more or less really a part of my racial background because of it. while the beauty myh that leads fat women to diet is the same myth that leads women of color to relax their hair it's not the same situation. and i guess i'm making progress that i was able to rethink the desire to relate to her post and then make it all about me. maybe it's enough to just relate, to say wow that resonated with me. i haven't posted a comment to her blog, mostly because i'm unsure of how to bring myself into her space and not bring my entitlement and privilge with me.

and so i went back into posts about privilege to read more about it and get a furthur handle. i'm still working on sorting it all out. i know i have white privilege. i know i have a seemingly heteronormative relationship which confers privilege. i know even if/when i find another partner to join the relationship there will be a shift in that seeming but i don't know to what extent. i think a lot of it will depend on who i end up with. another white guy? a woman? a person of color? each varriation brings other bagage with it. baggage i'm sure i'll deal with at that time.

but the white privilege thing is the one that i trip over the most. and in amoung the articles i found this gem. it's got some typos and it's an older piece but the list Peggy McIntosh puts together had some ahhhhhh moments for me. these in particular:

I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.
I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

that last one especially. because, like peggy, i was taught that racism is acts of meanness and bigotry and are pretty blatent. i still get a gut reaction when i hear, or read, about someone saying something is racist when there is no clear bigotry. i think to myself the person crying discrimination is being overly sensitive, or just trying to get sympathy, or is trying to get more help then they were offered. i'm not sure what i can do about it yet, other than keep on reading and pondering.

Shhhhh it's not ok

so last night my BF and i were looking at the latest news on the prop 8 opposition and the move toward legal proceedings in the state. and i was ranting at him about how fucked up it was that the prop passed and how the yes vote people lied and why the opposition failed to not only stop this piece of bullshit legislation from passing, but they failed to be inclusive and unifying in the way they did it. i was pacing, and ranting, and it took him aback a bit. he's never seen this political side of me, never seen this radical passionate side of me. oh, to be sure, he's seen me passionate about other things but never politics. and while our views match i am more well read on the subject i'm likely to rant about. and so he tried to calm me, think he'd done something to upset me, when really i was just angry at the situation. angry and swearing, which i rarely do.

and it frightened me for a moment. the idea of him shushing me, not to make me be quiet but to calm me down, was hard for me to process. because i wanted so much to know it had nothing to do with him trying to calm down the hysterical woman who was being unreasonable. i wanted so much for him to not have that seed of patriarchy deep inside him waiting like some cancer to suddenly wage war on our happiness. and while he assured me that no, he was afraid he'd done something to upset me and that i was angry at him, it did make me question the effect of activism.

not that i would give this up for him, but that it would break my heart if we were to fundamentally disagree on this. and i said to him the reason i feel it needful to speak and to give information and statistics is because i genuinely think 80% of people who speak out against gay marriage because it will force their church to do xyz, who back the fat people as unhealthy ideology and participate in fat hatred clothed as concern for the health of others, who are against comprehensive reproductive health are just ignorant or unaware of the spin they've been fed. and i said to him, these people are the kind that have to be talked to, have to be told, because eventually they will listen to bits and pieces and discover new ideas. and once that happens, the number of people who will be able to look at him and think (or worse say) "he's thin, he's good looking, he's smart so why is he fucking a fattie" will go down. if not away.

of course he promised to punch anyone who dared say such a thing in the face. which made me a little melty. but the fact that he hates willfully ignorant bigotry is a huge pat of why i love him.

Am I a Racist?

reading through big fat delicious, she has a post there about a rather shitty and racist e-mail she got from a family member. it's one i've seen too about how we label anyone white as racist for doing things POC do like attend "black" colleges, or have history months, or days to celebrate dead leaders. i know part of the reason we don't have these things is we don't really have to. every history class, with a growing number of exceptions (YEAY), are white history classes. we don't need to celebrate white men and women who fought the good fight for the advancement of the white race, because there wasn't much in the way of resistance met. yes, there were many people of all ethnic backgrounds who fought for civil rights in countries all over the world. and yes, i think anyone who uses racial slurs is racist. and so i am kinda torn over this kind of thing... cause on the one hand the knee jerk reaction is to say omg yes, that is SO wrong. and yet...... maybe it's a mark of my own privilege that i feel like some part of this is right. maybe it's that i'm still getting over myself. maybe it's the fact that i'm not proud to be white, and white alone, but i AM proud to be of russian/german/french/jewish ancestry and there is no earthly way anyone can say my skin is not pale as can be. is that the difference? naming the places my forebears came from and being proud of those origins rather than the blanket term "white." and yes, there are times when i feel like people are too quick to slap someone with the term racist, or that there is a pendulum swing in the opposite direction somehow. but how do i reconcile what i see in my own world with the very real injustice still happening? especially when it seems like those things contradict one another? and how do i respond to the accusation that pride in my heritage makes me racist?

Privilege

so, i'm beginning to think i may need to re-evaluate my anti-feminist stance. i'm reading shapely prose and come across an article about fat men, which leads me to articles on privilege which leads me to question myself...which is kinda the point of this whole search. i'm white, i'm hetero with bi leanings, i'm monogamous right now but usually live more polyamourous, i was raised in a middle class area except for the few years of jr high. generally i guess i have been pretty privileged.

not a bad thing, i know, but it does make me wonder how many of my attitudes are shaped by where i come from. i had a brief friendship with a girl who, in one of several nasty fights, accused me of being elitist. which i have never thought of myself as. but i want a certain level of financial Independence, a certain level of taste and refinement and creature comfort that i got used to living with my mom and during high school. i want more than top ramen and a place to lay my head... and i want a college degree and to be well read and part of the academia. does this make me elitist? do i think less of those people who don't have those things? who don't want those things?

i think there was a time when i did think those things, and i think a lot of it has to do with where i'm living at the time i do a self evaluation. maybe...i know there was a time when i thought i wanted to become a doctor and i pushed my then partner really hard to pick a direction and go to school and get all professional in something because i didn't want to be a doctor with a husband (we were engaged at the time) who was a welder or mechanic. i didn't think i would be comfortable taking him to high class parties with grease under his nails, or some equally bs fantasy situation that negated who he was as a person and made him into an accessory. and i felt, and still feel, really bad because in pushing him i alienated him and made small of those things that he loved about working with his hands. i've since decided not to go into medicine but i do have plans to go after a doctorate. that past partner and i are friends again, and he still loves working with hot cars and hot metals and i've come to appreciate that about him. and the amount of intelligence it takes to do those things. so am i over being elitist?

probably even less than i've gotten over being white, cause i think in part they go hand in hand. white privilege is why i never got followed around in shopping malls, even dressed in my gothic best. and yeah at 16 and 17 shoplifting is something i did, not totally proud of it but not totally ashamed either. and maybe this is my disconnect from feminism. this fact of being white and privileged and thus not being able to relate to women who have been marginalized for being women. women who have been harassed and objectified because they don't have a dick. as an adult who tends to become friends with older than me people i've had some ageist comments thrown my way, but never felt victimized by them. but maybe it's my inability to internalize that feminist struggle for equality because i've only rarely seen myself as the victim of inequality.

i was raised first by both parents and then by a single mom in a mostly white suburban middle class neighborhood in nice houses. jr high being the exception, when we lived in a mostly hispanic neighborhood in a duplex. and i can remember that being a horrible time in my life because i had no friends and i had this imploding family and i suddenly was home by myself and watching my sister. i went through this really deep depression that first year. i stopped caring about my appearance and my hair and i think i once went a whole week without brushing it or my teeth. but even in that hell hole of jr high, even with the teasing and the rumors and getting spit at and picked on and called nasty names, even in that dark place outside my peer group i was still intrinsically me. still white. still well fed. and i know now that we went through some tight times while my mom struggled to put us back together, but i didn't know how how hard she worked then and once were were out of that patch i just forgot it. we moved, and i didn't have to be that awkward girl anymore. the kids in class no longer called me whetta (white girl in spanish with derogatory over tones).

sure high school was still hard, and you couldn't pay me enough to go back but it was much more of an environment i was part of. not one of the minority white kids, but part of the majority. in the accelerated classes with kids who were all smart like me, all wanted knowledge like me. sure, i was awkward and not very popular but i had a social group i was nominally part of and a few close friends. and i came to a point where i started to like myself a whole lot more.

i still find it hard to put my finger on what my own privileges and prejudices and elitist attitudes are. and i expect that's going to be case for a while as i sort through it all and cram more info into my brain. i lack the fire i read in some posters who are well and truly outraged at the state of society and part of me wonders if maybe i'm dooming myself to that feeling of impotence and becoming another voice raging at the system about the broken things and inequality and oppressive white men. cause i don't want that to be me.